CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Bitcoin pyramid schemes wreak havoc on Brazil’s ‘New Egypt’

By DIANE JEANTET

1 of 8

Beachgoers congregate on Fort Beach in Cabo Frio, Brazil, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. G.A.S Consulting & Technology, a cryptocurrency investment firm founded by Glaidson Acacio dos Santos, a former waiter-turned-multimillionaire who is the central figure in what is alleged to be one of Brazil’s biggest-ever pyramid schemes, was based in the beach town dos Santos called home. 

(AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

CABO FRIO, Brazil (AP) — In April, Brazil’s federal police stormed the helipad of a boutique seaside hotel in Rio de Janeiro state, where they busted two men and a woman loading a chopper with 7 million reais ($1.3 million) in neatly packed bills.

The detainees told police they worked for G.A.S. Consulting & Technology, a cryptocurrency investment firm founded by a former waiter-turned-multimillionaire who is the central figure in what is alleged to be one of Brazil’s biggest-ever pyramid schemes.

Police say the company owned by 38-year-old Glaidson Acácio dos Santos had total transactions worth at least $7 billion ($38 billion reais) from 2015 through mid-2021 as part of a Bitcoin-based Ponzi scheme that promised investors 10% monthly returns.

In hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press, federal and state police and prosecutors accuse dos Santos and his associates of running a sophisticated racket defrauding thousands of small-scale investors who believed they were getting rich off Bitcoin’s steep appreciation. He is now in a Rio jail awaiting trial on charges including racketeering, financial crimes and ordering the murder and attempted murder of two business competitors. He remains under investigation in the attempted murder of a third competitor.

In public statements, dos Santos has repeatedly asserted his innocence. His lawyers didn’t reply to AP requests for comment.

Despite the long list of charges he faces, dos Santos represents an unlikely hero to his fervent supporters. Many view him as a modest Black man whose unorthodox Bitcoin business made them wealthy by gaming a financial system they believe is rigged by wealthy white elites.

The case also underscores the fast-growing appetite for cryptocurrencies in Brazil, where years of economic and political crises have made digital currencies an attractive shield against depreciation of the Brazilian real and double-digit inflation.

Bitcoin fervor was particularly keen in Cabo Frio, the resort town of 230,000 where G.A.S. was based. As G.A.S. revenues rose, enriching early adopters, copycat firms sprang up, seeking to cash in on the craze. A wave of cryptocurrency-related violence soon followed.

With so many alleged pyramid schemes, Cabo Frio came to be known as the “New Egypt.” And as the town’s top dog, dos Santos was dubbed the “Bitcoin Pharaoh.”

Police say dos Santos began trading in Bitcoin after leaving his job as a waiter in 2014. A one-time evangelical preacher in training, he enlisted clients from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Brazil’s largest neo-Pentecostal group, who earned a referral fee for bringing in fresh recruits and kicking back money to G.A.S., police documents say.

Jéfferson Colombo, a cryptofinance researcher at Sao Paulo’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, said religious groups are often targeted by pyramid schemers. “It’s through contacts that you increase the base of the pyramid,” he said.

In a statement, the Universal Church said it was cooperating with authorities and accused dos Santos of “harassing and recruiting” pastors and their flocks to join his company.

By 2017, dos Santos was starting to make serious money — and attract authorities’ attention. That year his company’s transactions totaled nearly 10 million reais ($1.8 million), 15 times higher than the previous year as money siphoned in and out of his bank accounts from all over Brazil, according to a federal police report. The country’s financial intelligence unit also noticed the company — at the time registered as a restaurant — was regularly trading cryptocurrency on online exchange platforms.

A view of the luxury condominium where former waiter-turned-multimillionaire Glaidson Acacio dos Santos had a home in Cabo Frio. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

The alleged scheme worked like this, according to prosecutors: Dos Santos would instruct clients to deposit their money – in cash to avoid further scrutiny – into bank accounts run by managing partners. The money would then be transferred to dos Santos or his Venezuelan wife, Mirelis Yoseline Diaz Zerpa, who would either pocket it, use it to buy bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies as well as traditional financial assets, or pay off other members of the scheme.

Clients were promised a 10% monthly return on their investments over 12- to 48-month contract periods, but did not own the bitcoins they were told G.A.S. was purchasing with their money. And, they were assured, it was risk-free: They would get their entire initial investment back at the end of the contract.

As Bitcoin fever grew, dos Santos was fast becoming a celebrity in Cabo Frio.

“If he wanted to run for mayor, governor even, he’d win,” said Gilson Silva do Carmo, 52, one of dos Santos’ alleged victims.

The chubby young man in thick-rimmed glasses was also gaining a taste for the high life, police and prosecutors said. Dos Santos bought expensive jewelry and a swanky apartment as contracts poured in from elsewhere in Latin America and as far away as the U.S., Europe and the Gulf.

Brazil’s lenient laws regulating cryptocurrency helped fuel dos Santos’ rise, experts say.

At the same time, Brazil’s securities regulator was making digital currencies more attractive: It authorized the country’s investment funds to invest in cryptocurrencies in 2018, giving them greater credibility. Last year, Brazil approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, only the second country in the world to do so. And Rio de Janeiro has recently said it wants to offer incentives to those paying city property taxes using bitcoins.

Meanwhile, trades in Brazilian reais on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, jumped to nearly $8.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, from just $152 million over the same period a year earlier, according to market data provider Kaiko.

In and around Cabo Frio, where residents had seen their neighbors reap rewards by investing their life savings in G.A.S., many began to fear missing out.

Do Carmo was among them. After catching COVID-19 and struggling to get back to work, he was forced to tap his retirement savings to make ends meet.

Gilson Silva do Carmo, an alleged victim of the G.A.S Consulting & Technology, after an interview in Iguaba Grande, Brazil. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Then his therapist told him he sold his house to invest in G.A.S., and had been receiving 10% monthly returns for a year. Do Carmo invested 40,000 reais ($7,000) — just over half the money left in his retirement fund.

In Cabo Frio, dos Santos’ success inspired other budding entrepreneurs to follow in his footsteps — not to mention those of Charles Ponzi, who died nearby in a Rio de Janeiro hospital charity ward in 1949. The Italian immigrant who engineered one of the largest scams in U.S. history in the 1920s was buried in a public Rio cemetery with his last $75.

Some competitors promised even higher returns than G.A.S. — 20% or more a month.

Cabo Frio Mayor José Bonifácio acknowledged his city found itself under a spell. “The talk of the town was to know how much (Bitcoin) was at, who was giving a bigger return,” he said.

Mayor Jose Bonifacio in his City Hall office. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Dos Santos wasn’t happy.

In mid-April, he discussed with associates how rivals were encroaching on his turf, according to WhatsApp messages intercepted by federal police.

“There’s a trader here in Cabo Frio, Mr. Pessano, who’s going for my clients. I can’t let that happen,” dos Santos wrote.

Less than four months later, on Aug. 4, Wesley Pessano, who advertised himself on social media as a cryptocurrency trader, was shot dead in his Porsche. Police accuse dos Santos of ordering the hit.

Rio state police have also linked two attempted killings to dos Santos and what they called his “extermination team.” On March 20, a trader known as Nilsinho was shot while driving his BMW through Cabo Frio. He was severely injured but survived. Three months later another firm’s operator was targeted, his car hit by 40 bullets; he also survived.

Things came to a head on April 28 when Rio federal police, acting on an anonymous tip, seized the 7 million reais at the helipad of the Insolito Boutique Hotel in Buzios, a short drive from Cabo Frio. A monthslong investigation into dos Santos’ business followed.

On Aug. 25, alerted that dos Santos was planning to flee Brazil, federal police raided more than a dozen locations linked to G.A.S., including dos Santos’ home where he was found with 13.8 million reais ($2.5 million) and taken into custody. Agents also found hard drives containing 10 times that amount in Bitcoin, gold bars, jewelry and several sports cars, including a white Porsche Panamera and an electric blue BMW Z4 convertible.

Fort Beach in Cabo Frio. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Bathers dive into the waters of Fort Beach in Cabo Frio. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Sixteen other associates were also charged, including Diaz Zerpa, dos Santos’ 38-year-old wife, who left the country weeks before the raid and is believed to be in Florida, according to authorities. They say she withdrew more than 4,300 bitcoins worth $185 million (1 billion reais). AP attempts to locate her were unsuccessful.

Do Carmo watched in horror as the seizures and arrests unfolded; he had invested the rest of his savings in the company just weeks earlier.

“I thought, ‘My God, what have I done?’” he said. “You watch everything you fought for, your entire life wash away from one moment to the next.”

Still, many early G.A.S. investors who had been receiving regular monthly payments refused to believe dos Santos did anything illegal.

After his arrest, a crowd gathered outside broadcaster TV Globo in Rio de Janeiro to protest coverage of the alleged racket. In October, scores of supporters blocked the street outside a federal courthouse in Rio, demanding his freedom.

Jeferson Brandão, a tax lawyer, G.A.S. investor and vocal advocate of dos Santos, said the company offered an attractive alternative to a banking sector that “only charges you fees.”

G.A.S. offered investors a chance to “take part in the profit,” Brandão said. ”‘Instead of giving you a crumb of the cake, I’m going to give you a slice.’”

From prison, dos Santos has maintained his innocence. In an open letter to investors last month, he blamed the authorities for freezing G.A.S. assets and “prohibiting me from paying you.”

Brazilian law enforcement is still trying to uncover the true size of dos Santos’ empire.

Prosecutors have identified at least 27,000 G.A.S. victims, with operations in at least 13 Brazilian states and seven other countries, including the U.S., United Arab Emirates, the U.K. and Portugal.

Lawyer Luciano Regis, 35, during an interview in Sao Pedro da Aldeia, Brazil. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

The true tally is likely much higher, said Luciano Regis, a lawyer representing dozens of victims. He said one of his clients enlisted her husband, mother, brother, sister-in-law and an 82-year-old aunt, investing a total 822,000 reais (about $150,000).

“It’s hard to have a conversation with anyone in Cabo Frio who doesn’t know someone who invested,” he said.

YEMEN

Houthis, aid group: Death toll from prison airstrike hits 82
By SAMY MAGDY

This photo provided by Ansar Allah Media Office, a man is rescued early Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, after Saudi-led airstrikes targeted a site in the contested city of Hodeida, Yemen. A Saudi-led airstrike targeting a prison run by Yemen's Houthi rebels killed and wounded detainees on Friday, rescuers said, part of a pounding aerial offensive that hours earlier saw another airstrike take the Arab world's poorest country off the internet. (Ansar Allah Media Office via AP)

CAIRO (AP) — The death toll from a Saudi-led coalition airstrike that hit a prison run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has climbed to at least 82 detainees, the rebels and an aid group said Saturday.

Internet access in the Arab world’s poorest country meanwhile remained largely down as the coalition continued airstrikes on the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and elsewhere.

The airstrike in the northern Saada province Friday was part of an intense air and ground offensive that marked an escalation in Yemen’s yearslong civil war. The conflict pits the internationally recognized government, aided by the Saudi-led coalition, against the Iranian-backed rebels.

The increase in hostilities follows a Houthi claim of a drone and missile attack that struck inside the United Arab Emirates’ capital earlier in the week. It also comes as government forces, aided by UAE-backed troops and coalition airstrikes, have reclaimed the entire Shabwa province from the Houthis and pressured them in the central Marib province. Houthis there have for a year attempted to take control of its provincial capital.

Ahmed Mahat, head of Doctors Without Borders’s mission in Yemen, told The Associated Press his group counted at least 82 dead and more than 265 wounded in the airstrike.

The Houthis’ media office said rescuers were still searching for survivors and bodies in the rubble of the prison site in Saada on the border with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki said the Houthis hadn’t reported the site as needing protection from airstrikes to the U.N. or the International Committee of the Red Cross. He claimed the Houthis’ failure to do so represented the militia’s “usual deceptive approach” in the conflict.

The Houthis used the prison complex to hold detained migrants, mostly Africans attempting to cross through the war-torn country into Saudi Arabia, according to the humanitarian organization Save the Children.

But Mahat, of Doctors Without Borders, said the airstrike hit a different part of the facility housing other types of detainees, and no migrants were killed.

Al-Malki said reports that the coalition targeted the prison were inaccurate and that the coalition would correspond “facts and details” to the U.N. and the ICRC, according to Saudi state-run television.

The Saada attack followed another Saudi-led coalition airstrike Friday at the Red Sea port city of Hodeida that hit a telecommunications center key to Yemen’s connection to the internet. Access to the internet has remained “largely down for more than 24 hours” in the country, advocacy group NetBlocks said Saturday.

The Saada airstrike, one of the deadliest of the war, was not the first to hit a Houthi-run prison. A September 2019 airstrike hit a detention center the southwestern Dhamar province, killing more than 100 people and wounding dozens.

Rights groups have previously documented that the Houthis placing civilian detention centers near military barracks under constant threat of airstrikes.

Friday’s airstrikes have renewed criticism of the coalition from the United Nations and international aid and rights groups, who just days previous had blasted the Houthis for the attack on the Emirates.

Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals and wedding parties, killing an estimated thousands of civilians according to monitoring groups. The Houthis meanwhile have used child soldiers and indiscriminately laid land mines across the country. They also launched cross-border attacks using ballistic missiles and explosives-laden drones on Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The coalition continued its airstrikes on Sanaa and elsewhere Saturday, targeting a Houthi-held military facility and an abandoned headquarters of Yemeni state TV in the capital. The coalition said airstrikes also targeted the Houthis in the contested Harib district in Marib.

And Yemeni forces closely allied with the UAE, known as the Giants Brigades, said they shot down three drones carrying explosives launched by the Houthis on government-held areas in Marib and Shabwa provinces.

The rebels, meanwhile, held a funeral procession in Sanaa for a senior military official killed along with family members in a coalition airstrike last week. Hundreds of Houthi supporters attended the military funeral of Gen. Abdalla Kassem al-Junaid, who headed the Air Academy.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken urged the warring parties to stop the escalation.

“We urge all parties to commit to a peaceful, diplomatic solution to ending the conflict. The Yemeni people deserve to live in peace and determine their own future,” he wrote on Twitter.

The latest escalation comes almost a year after President Joe Biden’s administration announced an end to U.S. support for the coalition and removed the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group as part of American efforts to end the grinding war.

The Houthi-claimed attack on the UAE on Monday prompted Biden to say that his administration would consider restoring the status of the Iranian-backed rebels as terrorists.

The latest fighting is some of the most intense since the 2018 battle for Hodeida and comes after a year of U.S. and U.N. diplomatic efforts failed to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. On Friday, the U.N. criticized the Houthis for not even allowing the body’s new envoy to visit their territories. Pitched fighting in Marib has remained a major sticking point, as the Houthis attempt to complete their control of the northern half of Yemen.

“The coalition has pulled the stops out to prevent a collapse in Marib and to shift the conflict towards a military equilibrium,” said Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group.

The conflict in the Arab world’s poorest country began in 2014, when the Houthis took Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, forcing the government to flee to the south, then into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led coalition, backed at the time by the U.S., entered the war months later to try to restore the government to power.

The conflict has since become a regional proxy war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and fighters. The war also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving millions suffering from food and medical care shortages and pushing the country to the brink of famine.

_________________

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

US BACKED SAUDI IMPERIALISTS

'No way to deny': coalition slammed over Yemen prison air raid

The Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen's Huthi rebels has "no way to deny" it carried out air strikes on a prison that killed scores of people, an aid agency has said.

© - Yemenis inspect the bodies of victims a day after reported Saudi-led airstrikes in the Huthi stronghold of Saada on January 22

The accusation by Doctors Without Borders comes after the military coalition denied any knowledge of the attack in the Huthi-held northern Yemeni city of Saada, while acknowledging a raid elsewhere.

"There is no way to deny that this is an air strike, everyone in Saada City heard it," an unnamed member of the agency, known by its French initials MSF, was quoted as saying in a statement late on Saturday

.

 Sophie RAMIS Map of Yemen locating Hodeida and Saada

"I live one kilometre (half a mile) from the prison and my house was shaking from the explosions."

The attack overnight on Friday created horrific scenes, with bombed-out buildings littered with bodies and hospitals overwhelmed.

Rescuers continue to claw through the rubble searching for survivors, MSF said.

The Iran-backed Huthis' health ministry said 82 people were killed and 266 wounded, the agency said. There was no independent confirmation of the figures.

The Saudi-led coalition -- which is backed by arms sales by countries including the United States, Britain and France -- has dismissed claims it was responsible as "baseless and unfounded".

But it did report strikes a few hours earlier on the Red Sea port city of Hodeida that knocked out Yemen's internet, complicating rescue efforts and compounding problems for the impoverished country.

- 'Terrible effects' -

"This is the latest in a long line of unjustifiable air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition on places like schools, hospitals, markets, wedding parties and prisons," said Ahmed Mahat, MSF head of mission in Yemen.

"Since the beginning of the war we have frequently witnessed the terrible effects of indiscriminate coalition bombing on Yemen, including when our own hospitals have been attacked."

MSF said its staff had confirmed the prison in Saada, the rebels' northern home base, was destroyed, and that a nearby hospital had run out of beds to treat the wounded.

"The hospital is facing a very difficult situation... with casualties lying on the floor," a staff member was quoted as saying.

The attacks marked a rapid escalation of hostilities after a drone and missile strike on the United Arab Emirates -- which is part of the coalition -- killed three in the capital Abu Dhabi last Monday.

Yemen's civil war began in 2014 when the Huthis seized the capital Sanaa, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to intervene to prop up the government the following year.

Rights groups have long criticised the coalition for civilian casualties in its aerial bombardment.

According to the Yemen Data Project, an independent tracker, there have been almost 9,000 civilian casualties from coalition air raids since 2015.

The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people directly or indirectly and left millions on the brink of famine, according the UN which calls it the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe.

bur/th/pjm

Coalition denies Yemen prison air strike that killed 70




Coalition denies Yemen prison air strike that killed 70An image grab from video made available by Yemen's Huthis shows what the rebels say is the prison destroyed by the attack on Saada (AFP/-)


Sat, January 22, 2022, 3:16 AM·3 min read

The Saudi-led coalition on Saturday denied carrying out an air strike on a prison in Yemen's rebel-held north that aid groups said killed at least 70 people, including migrants, women and children.

Claims the coalition ordered the raid, which reduced buildings to rubble and left rescuers scrabbling for survivors with their bare hands, were "groundless", the alliance said.

The attack, which coincided with a coalition strike on the Yemeni port of Hodeida that killed three children and knocked out the impoverished country's internet, was condemned by UN chief Antonio Guterres.

But "these claims adopted by the militia are baseless and unfounded", said coalition spokesperson Turki al-Malki, referring to the Iran-backed rebels.

This week has witnessed a dramatic upswing in the conflict that has already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, creating what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The rebels took the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting the Saudi-led intervention -- supported by the US, France and Britain -- in March 2015. It was intended to last just a few weeks.

The latest violence came after the Huthi rebels on Monday claimed their first deadly attack on Abu Dhabi, capital of coalition partner the United Arab Emirates, taking the conflict into a new phase.

The drone and missile attack, which killed three people, was the first deadly assault the UAE has acknowledged inside its borders, and prompted threats of reprisals.

- 'Horrific act of violence' -

The internet blackout, which went into its second day on Saturday according to web monitor NetBlocks, complicated rescue work and media reporting as information slowed to a trickle.

"The nation-scale internet disruption in Yemen is ongoing with no indication of recovery," NetBlocks said.

Unverified footage released by the Huthis revealed gruesome scenes at the bombed-out prison facility, as rescue workers scrambled to dig out bodies and mangled corpses were placed in piles.

Eight aid agencies operating in Yemen said in a joint statement that the prison in Saada, the rebels' home base, was used as a holding centre for migrants, who made up many of the casualties.

They said they were "horrified by the news that more than 70 people, including migrants, women and children, have been killed... in a blatant disregard for civilian lives".

Hospitals were overwhelmed as hundreds of casualties flooded in, aid workers said.

"It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It seems to have been a horrific act of violence," said Ahmed Mahat, Doctors Without Borders' head of mission in Yemen.

Meeting on Friday, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the "heinous terrorist attacks" on Abu Dhabi, but the council's Norwegian presidency also denounced the strikes on Yemen.

In a later statement, the UN chief reminded "all parties that attacks directed against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited by international humanitarian law".

- 'Destruction of the country' -

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for "all parties to the conflict to de-escalate" and "abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law".

Iran on Saturday also condemned recent air strikes on Huthi-held areas, warning they have "made the path to achieve a just peace in the country even more difficult," foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.

Saudi Arabia accuses regional rival Iran of providing military support to the Huthis, especially missiles and rockets, claims that Tehran denies.

Khatibzadeh said there was a lack of "serious determination to advance the political settlement of the Yemeni crisis", warning it would lead to the "destruction of the country and instability in the region".

The Huthis have warned foreign companies to leave the "unsafe" UAE, a veiled threat of revenge attacks after Friday's strikes.

"We advise the foreign companies in Emirates to leave because they invest in an unsafe country and the rulers of this country continue in their aggression against Yemen," warned Huthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree.

bur/th/lg/kir

‘Stop Right There!’: Foley recalls epic duet with Meat Loaf
By JOCELYN NOVECK and KRISTIN M. HALL



1 of 5

This photo provided by Karjaka Studios shows Ellen Foley. Foley, who collaborated with Meat Loaf on the hit single "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" from his 1977 hit album "Bat Out of Hell," is paying tribute to their "beautiful, feisty, joyful friendship." Meat Loaf died Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022 at age 74. (Aleksandr Karjaka/Karjaka Studios via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — “Stop Right There!” Three words of warning — and three words that Ellen Foley credits with launching her career in music.

It was Foley who belted out the words to Meat Loaf about halfway through their eight-and-a-half minute duet “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” the epic seduction song on his mega-selling 1977 “Bat Out of Hell” album.

Foley is now looking back on the singular experience of making the memorable song as she recalls Meat Loaf and a “beautiful, feisty, joyful friendship” that began in her early 20s. Meat Loaf, born Marvin Lee Aday, died on Thursday at 74.

He was the most unlikely of rock superstars, Foley says.

“I mean, that’s the wild thing,” she said in an interview Friday, when asked to explain the source of his fame. “Who would have thought that at the end of the ’70s, this 300-pound-plus guy would be a star? But that’s what it was. He was a character, you know, larger than life.”

But, she says, he came at the right time.

“People were ready for this. People were ready to come out of the laid-back Fleetwood Mac ’70s. And he had an extraordinary voice. I don’t know if he ever took a voice lesson — I think he came out pretty fully formed. First time I ever saw him walk into a rehearsal hall, he was Meat Loaf. He knew what he was.”

It was in the ’70s that Foley met Meat Loaf, when the two of them were driving around in a blue van, touring with a National Lampoon comedy show. “We got very close,” she said. “You’re on the road, you’re feeling lonely and there are just people you gravitate to.”

She describes him, as others have, as rather a man-child. “I’m not saying that derogatorily,” she noted. “But I think all the women in his life probably ended up sort of caring for him.”

“Bat Out of Hell,” a collaboration with songwriter Jim Steinman and producer Todd Rundgren, overcame mixed reviews to become, via aggressive touring, one of the top-selling albums in history, with worldwide sales of more than 40 million copies.

“I think it was sold off of live performance,” Foley said of the 1977 album. “They toured the heck out of it and people saw him, and were just blown away and bought the record.” And, of course, there was “the wonder of Meat Loaf,” she added. “He was a wonder, truly.”

As for their “Paradise” duet — about two kids “doubly blessed” because they were “barely 17” and “barely dressed” — people never stopped talking to Foley about it.

“It’s got an unbelievable mythology around it,” she said, noting that people often tell her they lost their virginity to the song. “Which makes sense,” she said. “They were following the script.” (The song included baseball announcer Phil Rizzuto giving a play-by-play about rounding the bases and sliding into home. Rizzuto later said he didn’t realize it was a metaphor.)

But Foley says people also recite a litany of other occasions when they’ve pulled out the song, telling her: “‘I did it at karaoke, at my wedding, at my high school reunion, at my bar mitzvah.’”

“It’s kind of incredible,” she said.

Indeed, Foley says, she sometimes feels like an astronaut, looking back on the big moonshot that defined a career.

“You do one thing and it goes with you for your whole life,” she said, “and it makes you always connected, and it makes you feel as young as you did when you sang that song — or went to the moon.”

In fact, though, Foley, now 70, was only beginning a long career as both an actor and singer.

She later originated the role of the Witch in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” in San Diego, and on TV starred for a season in “Night Court.” She’s recorded a number of solo albums and last year released her fifth, “Fighting Words.” She continues to perform and to teach.

But this week, Foley is remembering the friend she simply calls Meat, whom she last saw when they collaborated on his 2016 album, “Braver Than We Are.”

“Meat brought me into the consciousness of the rock ‘n’ roll world,” she wrote on Facebook, “and through ‘Paradise By the Dashboard Light,’ I get to be a horny teenager for all time. Meat: I will love you forever.”

___

Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee.

THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES

Grill company apologizes after sending meatloaf recipe on same day of rock star's death

BY CAROLINE VAKIL - 01/22/22 

© Associated Press/Charles Dharapak, file

Grill maker company Weber offered up a recipe on how to make “BBQ Meat Loaf” in an email on Friday, before realizing the message coincided with the death of actor and rock legend Meat Loaf, The Associated Press reported.

“At the time we shared this recipe with you, we were not aware of the unfortunate passing of American singer and actor Mr. Marvin Lee Aday, also known as Meat Loaf,” Weber said in a followup message, according to the news outlet. “We want to express our deepest apologies for this oversight and for any offense this email may have caused.”

Earlier this week, the actor and musician died at the age of 74. Meat Loaf, whose real name is Marvin Lee Aday, appeared in 65 films including “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “Fight Club,” “Wayne’s World” and “Focus.”

Aday also spent a season on former President Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” reality TV show and sold tens of millions of albums as a rock artist.

“We know how much he meant to so many of you and we truly appreciate all of the love and support as we move through this time of grief in losing such an inspiring artist and beautiful man,” a statement posted to his Facebook account read following the announcement of his death.

“We thank you for your understanding of our need for privacy at this time. From his heart to your souls…don’t ever stop rocking!”

The Hill has reached out to Weber for comment.

All 100 lab monkeys accounted for after several escape crash


1 of 4

Crates holding live monkeys are collected next to the trailer they were being transported in along state Route 54 at the intersection with Interstate 80 near Danville, Pa., Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, after a pickup pulling the trailer carrying the monkeys was hit by a dump truck. They were transporting 100 monkeys and several were on the loose at the time of the photo. (Jimmy May/Bloomsburg Press Enterprise via AP)

DANVILLE, Pa. (AP) — The last of the escaped monkeys from the crash of a truck towing a trailer load of 100 of the animals was accounted for by late Saturday, a day after the pickup collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania highway, authorities said.

Several monkeys had escaped following Friday’s collision, Pennsylvania State Police said. But only one had remained unaccounted for as of Saturday morning, prompting the Pennsylvania Game Commission and other agencies to launch a search for it amid frigid weather.

Kristen Nordlund, a spokesperson with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email Saturday evening that all 100 of the cynomolgus macaque monkeys had since been accounted for. Three were dead after being euthanized.

The email did not elaborate on why the three were euthanized or how all came to be accounted for. But Nordlund said those euthanized were done so humanely according to American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines.

The shipment of monkeys was en route to a CDC-approved quarantine facility after arriving Friday morning at New York’s Kennedy Airport from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, police said. The Atlanta-based CDC said the agency was providing “technical assistance” to state police in Pennsylvania.

The collision occured Friday on a state highway near an Interstate 80 exit in Pennsylvania’s Montour County, Trooper Andrea Pelachick told The Daily Item newspaper of Sunbury.

The location of the quarantine facility and the type of research for which the monkeys were apparently destined weren’t clear, but cynomolgus monkeys are often used in medical studies. A 2015 paper posted on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information referred to them as the most widely used primate in preclinical toxicology studies.

Earlier, police had earlier urged people not to look for or capture any monkey, with troopers tweeting: “Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey. Please call 911 immediately.”

Trooper Lauren Lesher had said the concern was “due to it not being a domesticated animal and them being in an unknown territory. It is hard to say how they would react to a human approaching them.”

Lesher said state police secured the scene for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the CDC.

The drivers of the trucks weren’t harmed and a passenger was transported to a medical center for treatment of suspected minor injuries, according to the state police’s crash report.

A crash witness, Michelle Fallon, told the Press Enterprise newspaper of Bloomsburg that she spoke with the pickup driver and a passenger after the crash. The driver appeared to be disoriented, and the passenger thought he might have injured his legs, she said.

Crates littered the road Friday as troopers searched for monkeys, rifles in hand. Valley Township firefighters used thermal imaging to try to locate the animals, and a helicopter also assisted, the Press Enterprise newspaper of Bloomsburg reported.

The pickup was heading west on I-80 when it got off at the Danville exit and then immediately tried to get back on, driving across the other lane, the newspaper reported.

Fallon told the Press Enterprise that she was behind the pickup when it was hit on the passenger side by the dump truck, tearing off the front panel of the trailer and sending more than a dozen crates tumbling out.

She and another motorist who stopped to help were standing near the scene when the other driver said he thought he saw a cat run across the road, Fallon said.

Fallon peeked into a crate and saw a small monkey looking back at her, she told the newspaper.

“They’re monkeys,” she told the other motorist.

___

US: Lab monkeys found and killed after Pennsylvania road crash

Three monkeys from Mauritius have been killed after fleeing a road crash in the US state of Pennsylvania. All 100 of the animals that were being transported to a lab when the crash occurred have now been accounted for.

  

The monkeys were being transported in crates

Three monkeys have been found and killed after the vehicle carrying them to a laboratory crashed in the US state of Pennsylvania, allowing them to escape.

All monkeys from the 100 being transported from New York to the lab in the southeastern state of Florida are now accounted for, police said on Saturday night.

It had previously been believed that four monkeys were missing after the crash.

Vaccine research

The vehicle was transporting Cynomolgus monkeys, also known as long-tailed macaques. The animals can cost up to $10,000 each (€8,800) and have been in demand for coronavirus vaccine research, according to the New York Times.

Local news said a police helicopter with thermal cameras was used to track down the monkeys, while officers on the ground used powerful flashlights.

Residents of the area were advised not to approach the monkeys and to call emergency services in case of a sighting.

The incident took place near the community of Danville, Pennsylvania on Friday afternoon. The shipment of monkeys was en route to a CDC-approved quarantine facility after arriving Friday morning at New York's Kennedy Airport from Mauritius, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

 tj, jcg/rs (AP, AFP)

Lab monkeys escape after US road crash, one on the loose

Police released a photo of one of the escaped primates in a tree (above). 

PHOTO: TWITTER?PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE

JAN 23, 2022, 12:13 AM SGT

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The crash in Pennsylvania of a truck transporting 100 monkeys to a laboratory allowed four of them to escape, triggering a search by police who warned the public not to approach the animals.

The vehicle collided with a dump truck near Danville, Pennsylvania on Friday afternoon, en route to a laboratory in Florida.

Police said on Twitter that four monkeys had "fled the crash scene into the surrounding area."

Three were later captured, but one was still on the loose on Saturday morning.

The local WNEP news site said a police helicopter with thermal cameras was used to track down the cynomolgus monkeys, while officers on the ground used powerful flashlights.

Pennsylvania State Police released an image of one primate perched in a tree off Route 54 during the freezing cold night.

A reporter said police surrounded the monkey before shots were fired from an unidentified weapon.

"Crash Update: There is still one monkey unaccounted for, but we are asking that no one attempt to look for or capture the animal," police troopers said on Twitter on Saturday morning.

Cynomolgus monkeys - also known as long-tailed macaques - can cost up to US$10,000 (S$13,000) each and have been in demand for coronavirus vaccine research, according to the New York Times. They can live for 30 years in captivity.

 

 

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/01/police-truck-with-100-monkeys-crashes.html

AP PHOTOS: Ukrainians observe pagan-rooted new year festival; MALANKA

By ETHAN SWOPE

1 of 22

A villager, dressed in a traditional bear costume, celebrates the Malanka festival in the village of Krasnoilsk, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. Dressed as goats, bears, oxen and cranes, many Ukrainians rang in the new year last week in the colorful rituals of the Malanka holiday. Malanka, which draws on pagan folk tales, marks the new year according to the Julian calendar, meaning it falls on Jan. 13-14. In the festivities, celebrants go from house to house, where the dwellers offer them food. 

(AP Photo/Ethan Swope)


KRASNOILSK, Ukraine (AP) — Dressed as goats, bears, oxen and cranes, many Ukrainians ring in the new year in the colorful rituals of the Malanka holiday.

Malanka, which draws on pagan folk tales, marks the new year according to the Julian calendar, meaning it falls on Jan. 13-14.

In the festivities, celebrants go from house to house, where the dwellers offer them food. According to tradition, a household should have 12 dishes on offer — one for each month of the year. Pancakes, pies and cheese dumplings are common dishes for the holiday.

The celebrations stem from a pagan myth about Malanka, a daughter of the Slavic deity Lada, who was once kidnapped by an evil snake and locked up in the underworld before being rescued.

One of the most famous rituals is the driving of a man dressed as a goat, symbolizing a dying and resurrecting deity. In some areas, homeowners will burn straw and a didukh — a decoration made from a sheaf of wheat — to symbolize the death of everything bad.

Seoul says it paid Iran’s delinquent UN dues to restore vote

By ISABEL DEBRE

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Using Iranian bank funds freed from American sanctions, South Korea has paid Iran’s $18 million in delinquent dues owed to the United Nations, Seoul said Sunday. The step was apparently approved by Washington to restore Tehran’s suspended voting rights at the world body.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said Seoul had paid the sum using Iranian assets frozen in the country after consulting with the United States Treasury — a potential signal of flexibility amid floundering nuclear negotiations.

The ministry said it expected Iran’s voting rights to be restored immediately after their suspension earlier this month for delinquent dues.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Iran state television’s English-language arm Press TV quoted Iran’s permanent representative to the U.N. as confirming that the dues had been paid and Iran’s voting rights would soon be restored. He did not specify how the money had been paid.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, as an active member of the United Nations, has always been committed to paying its membership dues on time,” Majid Takht-e Ravanchi said. He expressed outrage at the U.S. for what he called its “brutal and unilateral sanctions against Iran” that have prevented Tehran from gaining access to funds to pay the arrears for the past two years.

The funds had been impounded at Korean banks under sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump after he withdrew the U.S. from Tehran’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control must grant a license for these transactions under the American banking sanctions imposed on Iran. The Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the unfrozen funds.

The Biden administration wants to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Diplomats are now engaged in delicate negotiations to revive the accord in Vienna, although a breakthrough remains elusive as Iran abandons every limitation the deal imposed on its nuclear enrichment. The country now enriches a small amount of to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons grade levels — and spins far more advanced centrifuges than allowed.

Under the United Nations Charter, a nation that owes the previous two full years’ worth of dues loses its voting rights at the General Assembly.

A letter from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres circulated earlier this month revealed that Iran was among several delinquent countries on that list, which also includes Venezuela and Sudan. The General Assembly can make exceptions to the rule, determining that some countries face circumstances “beyond the control of the member.”

According to the secretary-general’s letter, Iran needed to pay a minimum of $18.4 million to restore its voting rights.

Iran also lost its voting rights in January of last year, prompting Tehran to lash out at the U.S. for imposing crushing sanctions that froze billions of dollars in Iranian funds in banks around the world. Tehran regained voting rights last June after making the minimum payment on its dues.

Iran over the past few years has pressured Seoul to release about $7 billion in revenues from oil sales that remain frozen in South Korean banks since the Trump administration tightened sanctions on Iran.

The frozen funds hang in the balance as diplomats struggle to revive the nuclear deal. Senior South Korean diplomats including Choi Jong Kun, the first vice foreign minister, flew to Vienna this month to discuss the fate of the assets with their Iranian counterparts.

___

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

UNESCO lists Viking-era wooden sailboats on heritage list

By JAMES BROOKS

1 of 10

A man repairs a 10-meter wooden row boat, built in the Nordic clinker boat tradition, at the Viking Ship Museum's boatyard. Roskilde, Denmark, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. For thousands of years, wooden sail boats, best known for having been in use during the Viking-era, allowed the peoples of northern Europe to spread trade, influence and -- in some cases war — across the seas and rivers. In December, UNESCO, the U.N.’s culture agency, added the “clinker’ boat traditions to its list of “Intangible Cultural Heritage,” the result of the first joint nomination from the whole Nordic region.

 (AP Photo/James Brooks)


ROSKILDE, Denmark (AP) — For thousands of years, wooden sailboats allowed the peoples of Northern Europe to spread trade, influence and sometimes war across seas and continents.

In December, the U.N.’s culture agency added Nordic “clinker boats” to its list of traditions that represent the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden jointly sought the UNESCO designation.

The term “clinker” is thought to refer to the way the boat’s wooden boards were fastened together.

Supporters of the successful nomination hope it will safeguard and preserve the boat-building techniques that drove the Viking era for future generations as the number of active clinker craftsmen fades and fishermen and others opt for vessels with cheaper glass fiber hulls.

“We can see that the skills of building them, the skills of sailing the boats, the knowledge of people who are sailing … it goes down and it disappears,” said Søren Nielsen, head of boatyard at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen.

The museum not only exhibits the remains of wooden vessels built 1,000 years ago, but also works to rebuild and reconstruct other Viking boats. The process involves using experimental archaeological methods to gain a deeper, more practical understanding of the Viking Age, such as how quickly the vessels sailed and how many people they carried.

Nielsen, who oversees the construction and repair of wooden boats built in the clinker tradition, said there are only about 20 practicing clinker boat craftsmen in Denmark, perhaps 200 across all of northern Europe.

“We think it’s a tradition we have to show off, and we have to tell people this was a part of our background,” he told The Associated Press.

Wooden clinker boats are characterized by the use of overlapping longitudinal wooden hull planks that are sewn or riveted together.

Builders strengthen the boats internally by additional wooden components, mainly tall oak trees, which constitute the ribs of the vessel. They stuff the gaps in between with tar or tallow mixed with animal hair, wool and moss.

“When you build it with these overlaps within it, you get a hull that’s quite flexible but at the same time, incredibly strong,” explained Triona Sørensen, curator at Roskilde’s Viking Ship Museum, which is home to to the remains of five 11th-century Viking boats built with clinker methods.

Nielsen said there is evidence the clinker technique first appeared thousands of years ago, during the Bronze Age.

But it was during the Viking Age that clinker boats had their zenith, according to Sørensen. The era, from 793 to 1066, is when Norsemen, or Vikings, undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and trading voyages throughout Europe. They also reached North America.

Their light, strong and swift ships were unsurpassed in their time and provided the foundations for kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

If “you hadn’t had any ships, you wouldn’t have had any Viking Age,” said Sørensen. “It just literally made it possible for them to expand that kind of horizon to become a more global people.”

While the clinker boat tradition in Northern Europe remains to this day, the ships are used by hobbyists, for festivities, regattas and sporting events, rather than raiding and conquest seen 1,000 years ago.

The UNESCO nomination was signed by around 200 communities and cultural bearers in the field of construction and traditional clinker boat craftsmanship, including Sami communities.

The inscription on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list obliges the Nordic countries to try to preserve what remains of the fading tradition.

“You cannot read how to build a boat in a book, so if you want to be a good boat builder, you have to build a lot of boats,” the Viking Ship Museum’s Nielsen said. “If you want to keep these skills alive, you have to keep them going.”

Farmers’ protest in Spain highlights rural concerns


1 of 11

People on horseback follow a tractor during a march in defence of Spanish rural areas during a protest in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022. Members of rural community are demanding solutions by the government for problems and crisis in the Rural sector. (AP Photo/Paul White)


MADRID (AP) — Farmers, cattle-breeders, hunters and opposition supporters descended Sunday on the Spanish capital of Madrid to protest environmental and economic policies by Spain’s left-of-center government that they say are hurting rural communities.

Sunday’s protest was organized by Alma Rural 2021, a platform representing over 500 rural organizations from all corners of Spain. Members of opposition parties, ranging from centrists to far-right supporters, also attended.

The demonstration came as Spanish politicians are campaigning before an early election in Castilla-Leon, a vast region northeast of Madrid where proposals against depopulation and agricultural policies are taking center stage.

Carlos Bueno, head of Alma Rural 2021, said the protest aimed to highlight rural concerns amid what he called “ideological” attacks from the government. Concerns ranged from regulating prices for agricultural products to protections for those who breed cattle for bullfights and more subsidies for rural industries.



Tractors and bull carts headed the march along a Madrid thoroughfare, with protesters walking from the gates of the Ecology Transition Ministry — the previous Environment Ministry — to the Agriculture Ministry. Among the many banners held by protesters, one read: “Farmers speak. Who’s listening?”

Spain’s Ecological Transition Ministry said the country’s budget for 2022 includes 4.2 billion euros ($4.7 billion) to fight the depopulation of rural areas. Spain’s rural world “doesn’t need populist slogans but political involvement and resource to solve historical problems,” it said in a statement.

A spat over industrial livestock farming has dominated headlines for the past month since Consumer Minister Alberto Garzón, a member of the far-left junior partner of the Socialist-led administration, criticized big cattle operations for damaging the environment and producing poor quality food for export.

His remarks caused a political storm, created divisions within the ruling coalition and led to calls by right-wing opposition parties for Garzón to resign.