In the Middle East, culture around recreational drugs is changing

Smoking cannabis on social media and sharing jokes about getting stoned are leading to more openness about recreational drug use in a region where intoxication of any kind is usually frowned upon.

A sign in a Moroccan cafe reads "no drug smoking here"

The grainy video on Facebook shows Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi , Egypt's authoritarian leader, in what appears to be a hall filled with soldiers.

El-Sissi, a military officer who has been running the country since deposing its elected president in 2013, takes the microphone, says a few words, then starts to laugh. He can't stop and begins to snort and gasp. 

"El-Sissi is a stoner," says a mocking caption under the 2017 Facebook post, punctuated with laughing emoticons.

This kind of joke is just one of thousands found on Arabic-language pages on social media that specialize in what is known as "stoner humor." Some have millions of followers.

Livestreaming drug use

"Stoner humor" is just one example of how a more casual attitude toward smoking cannabis is becoming increasingly popular in some parts of the Middle East.

Recently there have also been a number of cases in Gulf States where social media users have filmed themselves smoking cannabis. Some were arrested by local police.

Last summer, Dubai-based influencer and model Omar Borkan al-Gala was expelled from the emirate for allegedly smoking cannabis during a live stream on his Instagram account, where he has 1.3 million followers.

Senior Dubai police officers justified his expulsion, saying that there was a strong correlation between celebrities who promoted the use of illicit drugs and teenagers under pressure to try them.

In 2021, Qatar police blocked 75 online profiles and websites for selling or promoting drugs. In 2019, they only blocked 15.

In the past, Saudi police have said people who share stoner jokes were responsible for the disintegration of decent society. 

Historical precedent

Despite the outrage from law enforcement, locals in the Middle East have always used drugs.

"It is true that people there historically condemned intoxication, in whatever form it took," Maziyar Ghiabi, a lecturer in medical humanities at the University of Exeter who focuses on drug policy, pointed out. "But that doesn't mean that it didn't exist."

Cannabis has been part of Middle Eastern culture for ages. In the 12th century, some orders of Sufis, who practice a more mystical form of Islam, smoked cannabis as part of religious rituals.

However, until recently, few locals have been overt about their recreational use of illegal drugs. 

Egyptian men smoke waterpipes with hashish, in around 1910

"Young people's attitudes towards things like hashish [cannabis resin] are definitely changing," said Mahmoud, a 32-year-old Syrian who lives in Germany and didn't wish to give his full name because of the subject matter.

Back in his native Damascus, Mahmoud said he and his friends smoked hashish, or cannabis resin, and took amphetamine pills — known by the brand name Captagon — for fun. The pills contain a mix of amphetamines and are often referred to as the poor man's cocaine.

But Mahmoud says only his closest friends knew about his recreational drug use. He believes that now younger people from the region, especially those from its urban centers, are more open about such things.

Asked when attitudes began to change, Mahmoud smiled and answered: "Since the Internet."

International influence

A study called "Drugs Behind the Veil of Islam: A View of Saudi Youth," published last October 2021 in the scientific journal Crime, Law and Social Change, came to similar conclusions.

Researchers did in-depth interviews with 18 Saudi university students and concluded that young Saudis are becoming more interested in, and open about, using drugs such as cannabis recreationally, especially online.

"The Hekmat Mohashish account posts so many funny videos and stories about hashish smokers," one of the interviewees said, referring to a popular Facebook page that posted information and jokes about recreational drugs and had more than 1 million followers. "They are so funny that people even don't think smoking hashish is haram [not allowed].”

Morocco is the world's largest producer of cannabis, even though the drug is illegal there

The study also came up with other reasons for a more neutral attitude toward illicit drugs in Saudi Arabia — including more interactions with foreigners and international culture, how religious (or not) people are and the recent loosening of rules on social interaction.

Hidden numbers

"With social media, everything is more open now," Elie Aaraj, director of the Beirut-based Middle East and North Africa Harm Reduction Association, or MENAHRA, told DW. "A younger generation knows more about drugs and how to use them."

It is impossible to know whether these changes in attitude online translate to increased drug use in real life though. Primarily this is because there are few reliable statistics on the topic. 

"Data from the Middle East is scarce, and therefore we cannot say anything about any increasing trend in drug use for the region," a spokesperson from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, told DW. The organization compiles an annual report on illicit drug use around the world.

In its 2021 assessment of the region, MENAHRA confirmed that fact, noting that the various crises around the region make it difficult to come up with exact numbers on drug use or abuse.

While each country has different patterns of drug use depending on what substance is most readily available, the advisory organization believes that cannabis is still the most popular drug overall in the Middle East.

The experts concluded that increasing openness about its use could be seen as positive in some ways.

A more realistic approach to drug use might result in a more "plausible, coherent public policy that minimizes the risks of drug use," Exeter University researcher Ghiabi argued. 

"We need more than just repressive rules [on drug use] because these are not enough to deal with this situation," Aaraj concluded.

Edited by: Jon Shelton

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#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

India arrests Kashmir journalist for 'anti-national' Facebook posts

Fahad Shah, the editor of news portal Kashmir Walla, has been accused of inciting violence and "glorifying terrorism" as Indian officials continue their media clampdown.


Fahad Shah has been accused of 'glorifying terrorism and spreading fake news'

Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir have arrested a prominent journalist accused of publishing "anti-national content" as part of a widening clampdown on media in the disputed region.

On Saturday, police tweeted that Fahad Shah was wanted in three cases of "glorifying terrorism, spreading fake news and inciting general public for creating L&O (law and order) situations."


Shah serves as the editor of news portal Kashmir Walla. He was questioned by authorities in southern Pulwama town on Friday and subsequently arrested.

Police said Shah was identified among users of Facebook and other online portals who had published content that had a "criminal intention" to spark fear and could "provoke the public to disturb law and order."

Watch video04:22 Is the media crackdown in Kashmir escalating?

Gunfight report linked to the arrest

Shah's arrest is believed to be connected to a gunfight inside a civilian house between Kashmiri rebels and Indian troops in Pulwama on January 30. Police had said a rebel commander was killed in the hostilities along with a Pakistani and another local militant. The fourth person killed was the house owner's teenage son. The authorities described the youth as a "hybrid" militant, a term police began use for alleged militants with no police record and who operate as civilians.

The Kashmir Walla website carried a series of reports on the gunfight presenting both sides. One video report quoted family members of the slain teenager refuting the police. Another piece of footage quoted the boy's sister which contradicted an earlier statement from the family.

Watch video03:11Kashmir journalists say threats, intimidation on the rise

Journalism under the microscope

In recent years Shah has come under increasing scrutiny over his reporting. He had already been questioned by police officers several times relating to his media work, long before Friday's arrest.

Shah's detention illustrated the "utter disregard" authorities have in the region "for press freedom and the fundamental right of journalists to report freely and safely," said the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) Asia program, Steven Butler.

Dozens of journalists in Indian-controlled Kashmir have regularly been summoned by police and questioned for their work since 2019, when New Delhi revoked the territory's partial autonomy, bringing it under direct rule.


jsi/dj (AP, AFP)

Kashmir: Victims demand justice in Indian army killings

Rights activists and family members of victims say the Indian army in Kashmir is using a legal loophole to get away with murder.


Human rights advocates say Indian troops can operate with 'impunity' in Kashmir

On a summer morning in 2020, 25-year-old Abrar Chouhan rose early to play with his son before leaving his village in Indian-administered Kashmir to work as a seasonal laborer in an apple orchard.

He knew that he wouldn't see his family for some time as he headed off to work with his brother-in-law.

"I told him not to leave me alone, but he wanted to earn money to complete construction of our house and to get our son into a good school," his wife, Shireen Akhter, told DW.

Little did she know, her husband would never return.

He was one of three men killed by the Indian army on July 17, 2020, in a remote cabin located on a hilltop covered in apple orchards outside the town of Shopian.

Following the incident, the Indian army released a statement claiming that it had killed three "Pakistani militants" who fired on them, and recovered pistols and other ammunition from them.

Based on pictures of their bodies, the men were identified as Chouhan, his 16-year-old brother-in-law, Abrar Khan, and another 21-year-old man named Imtiyaz Hussain.
Laborers killed to allegedly collect a bounty

The killings triggered protests and an investigation into why these men, who had no affiliation with Pakistani militants, were shot by Indian Army soldiers.

In December 2020, Jammu and Kashmir police determined that the killings were part of a scheme in which reward money and promotions are given out to army officers in exchange for targeting militants.

Shireen Akhter says her husband was killed by Indian army soldiers for a bounty

In some cases, civilians are falsely branded militants and killed to reap a reward from the Indian army.

In the orchard killings, two civilian "informers" and an Indian army officer are accused of staging the entire incident to collect a bounty equivalent to $27,000 (€23,000).

Police said army officer Captain Bhoopendra Singh "furnished false information to mislead senior officers into granting the reward, in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy."

Legal loophole complicates prosecution

In Kashmir, when local authorities need to investigate Indian army soldiers accused of human rights violations, they must first seek permission from New Delhi under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

For decades, the Indian military has been fighting Pakistan-backed insurgents in Kashmir. Islamabad says it provides only diplomatic support to Kashmiri insurgents.

According to an Indian army statement to DW, "Pakistan continues to be obsessed with Kashmir," and engages in a "vigorous proxy war in the Union Territory."

"Therefore, there is a requirement to conduct counter-terrorism operations to secure lives of the citizens," the statement read.

The Indian military also says the act is necessary to allow soldiers to respond to threats without fear of prosecution.

Critics argue that the AFSPA gives Indian armed forces wide powers to shoot to kill, carry out arrests on flimsy pretexts and conduct warrantless searches.

In the Shopian case, the army invoked the AFSPA to have the accused officer and two other army personnel involved stand trial by court martial.

"Initially, we had hope for justice. But, when the case was transferred to a military court, we realized that it will just be another number on a long list of killings in fabricated encounters by the Indian Army in Kashmir. There won’t be any justice," said Shireen Akhter.

Indian human rights activist Vrinda Grover told DW that the AFSPA has allowed the Indian military "unbridled power" in Kashmir for three decades.

"Indian soldiers have raped, tortured and killed people in Kashmir for in fake encounters without fear of being held accountable," she said.

Abrar Chouhan, his brother-in-law, and another man were shot dead in this cabin outside the town of Shopian

Indian army granted 'impunity' in Kashmir

Abdul Rashid Khan, 45, said his father and four other civilians were killed by the Indian army in a "fake encounter" 22 years ago.

The incident took place in southern Kashmir, and eight people were killed in protests that followed.

In 2007, public prosecutors indicted five army officers for killing the protesters. However, using the AFSPA, the army was able to bring the case to court-martial and the charges were subsequently dismissed.

"In a court-martial, the judge, jury and executor are the military, and the proceedings don't meet fair trial processes," Grover said, adding that the AFSPA, combined with court-martial proceedings, allows the military "absolute impunity" to violate human rights and is a continuing failure of the Indian justice system.

"These special laws for armed forces consolidate and entrench this impunity, making accountability impossible for egregious human rights abuses," Grover said.
Military says AFSPA is needed

Retired Indian Army General Ata Hasnain told DW that the act provides protection for soldiers operating in a hostile environment such as Kashmir, where mistakes can happen during operations.

For example, in February 2011, the army killed a young man in a case of mistaken identity.

"He was asked to stop at night, but he ran and got shot. He was innocent, but he flouted the rules of night curfew. Should the soldiers who shot him be prosecuted? Certainly not. They played by rules, he did not. Protection under AFSPA caters for such situations. Otherwise, soldiers will get prosecuted left, right and center," Hasnain said.

In a statement, the Indian army said it had "established a robust mechanism to ensure that all allegations of human rights violations are investigated" and the culprits, "if any, are punished."

The army statement also said there had been "a substantial decrease in the number of allegations of human rights violations against the army in the past few years."

Regarding the Shopian case, the statement said that the "Indian army has been proactive in investigations" and has taken "actions based on evidence, as has been the norm for all allegations and reported incidents in the past."

"In this case, the court-martial of the accused is presently underway, and due process of law will be followed to ensure justice," the statement said.

Lieutenant General DP Pandey, who commands the Indian army's Srinagar-based corps, recently told media that the AFSPA needs to be in force while the army is engaged in counterterrorism operations.

"I am sure the government will look at the revocation of AFSPA at a suitable time when the security situation improves," Pandey said.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn

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Vast archives on Jewish life hidden from the Nazis now online

In 1941, Jewish intellectuals forced to work in the Nazi-controlled Vilnius archives risked their lives to hide documents from them. These have now been digitized and can be viewed online.



'The Autobiography of Beba Epstein'

In 1925, prominent European intellectuals from the Jewish community, including Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein, helped establish the Yiddish Scientific Institute (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, YIVO) in Berlin and Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius in Lithuania). Its task was to collect empirical evidence on modern-day Jewish life.

There was a specific reason for this.

"Everybody had been studying the Talmud since the Middle Ages. The Kabbalah of the Torah," Jonathan Brent, CEO and executive director of the New York-based YIVO Institute of Jewish Research told DW. "But nobody knew what was the actual day-to-day process whereby Jews survived, made their way in the world, cared for their children. What were their actual traditions? What were their songs? What were their relations with their neighbors and their non-Jewish neighbors?"

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A project of self-discovery

The same year that YIVO was founded, Max Weinreich, the then-head of YIVO's Wilno (also known as Vilna) branch sent "zamlers" — Yiddish for 'collectors' — around the world to collect information and material from Jewish communities.

He also published advertisements asking people to send posters, letters, political statements, and books as materials for the study on modern Jewish life. YIVO CEO Jonathan Brent explained that Weinreich's call "inflamed the imagination of Jewish people."

"They were excited about this idea. It's not like discovering the faith of a Holy Roman Empire or something that happened in 1492. It was self-discovery…The idea of the YIVO Institute was that this process of self-discovery would equip people to enter into the modern world and build a modern Jewish identity," he added.

Over the next few years, YIVO evolved into "the largest collection of material in the world on East European Jewish life," according to its website.

'Manuscript on Astronomy,' 1751

Nazi takeover

YIVO's success, however, was short-lived. The Nazis had occupied Poland in 1939 and entered Vilnius in 1941. Nazi troops, under Alfred Rosenberg, an NSDAP ideologue and the Third Reich's minister for the eastern occupied territories, seized YIVO's collections. The idea was to destroy part of the material and send some of it to Frankfurt to serve as fodder for the antisemitic ideology that was being churned out by the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question (in German, Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage).

Because the Nazis were not well-versed with Jewish culture and local languages, they needed people to sort through YIVO's extensive collections. So, they employed around 32 forced laborers — consisting of mostly Jewish intellectuals that included Yiddish poets Shmerke Kaczerginski and Avrom Sutzkever, and former YIVO co-director Zelig Kalmanovitch — to sift through the archives.

Watch video02:41 Germany celebrates 1,700 years of Jewish life and history

Making away with the loot

When the Nazies occupied Vilnius, they forced the Jews into ghettos and intellectual Jewish slave laborers were roped in for the sorting project inside the YIVO building. At some point, the members of the group decided they didn't want to give the Nazis everything. Many doubts circled their minds: "They could get bombed by the allies. What if the Nazis burned everything at the end of the war?" So, the group decided to hide the documents in the ghettos, Brent explained.

"And in an unbelievable effort, they hid books and papers and all kinds of things on their bodies under their clothes, their pants and their shoes. They walked out of the YIVO building with this material and they walked into the ghetto with it. If any one of them had been detected doing this, they would have been shot on the spot immediately," the expert on Jewish studies continued.

The group succeeded in getting hundreds of thousands of pages of materials and books, and these materials were then hidden in metal canisters underground and a fair amount of it was also given to their non-Jewish friends, namely the Lithuanians and the Poles.

Watch video02:41Germany: Where the Holocaust was conceived

After the war

By 1945, much of the material that had been sent to Frankfurt by the Nazis was recovered by a US organization called the Monuments Men and sent to New York, where YIVO's Max Weinreich had fled, and was setting up a new base for the organization. In Vilnius, the documents were dug out after WWII ended in 1945.

"Sutzkever and Kaczerginski had the idea of building a new Jewish museum of Vilnius," Brent explains, adding that by the time, Vilnius had become the capital of Lithuania, which was under Soviet occupation. But soon enough, the Soviets began their own campaign against the Jews.

This time round, there were no remaining Jewish intellectuals to rescue the documents. Instead, it was the Lithuanian librarian, Antanas Ulpis, who preserved the materials in the nooks and crannies of the St.George Church and Carmelite monastery in the Lithuanian capital.

The documents were eventually discovered after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

A Jewish communal record book from southwestern Lithuania, 1836

1.5 million online exhibits

Jonathan Brent became the CEO of the YIVO Institute in New York in 2009. When he visited Lithuania that year, the documents were being stored, as he puts it, "in dark unventilated rooms." Nobody saw or read these materials, which were steadily deteriorating.

Consequently, in 2015, Brent and his colleagues initiated the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project, to digitize the documents, with the additional aim of virtually reuniting YIVO's collections from Lithuania and New York. Some $7 million (€6.2 million) and seven years later, this collection is now online.

Today, YIVO owns over 40,000 rare and unique books and periodicals, and over 1.5 million documents collected from Jews in Eastern Europe.

This includes the "Autobiography of Beba Epstein," which was written in the 1933-1934 school year by Beba Epstein, then aged 11 or 12. Her book, which can be viewed on the YIVO museum's website is described as providing "a look into the life of a vibrant, young girl and an insight into the life of Jewish children in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust."

'NEVER AGAIN': MEMORIALS OF THE HOLOCAUST

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

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Another notable example is a diary of Theodor Herzl, who convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897, following the publication of his book "The Jewish State" in 1896. He is one of the founders of the political form of Zionism, which was the movement to establish a Jewish homeland.

"It's the largest collection of pre-war material on Jewish life: Folklore, music, poetry, plays, political organizations, social organizations, cooking, medical records, the organization of the school systems," Brent explained.

The material aims to give its viewers an understanding of how Jewish society was organized — and not without a sprinkling of humor from the olden days. For instance, a 1927 Yiddish hiking manual offers the following advice to its young readers: "Backpacks must be hung up. It's happened before that even a rucksack can go missing and only turn up again in the mouth of a cow!"

The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections can be accessed here.

Edited by: Brenda Haas

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Why Deutsche Welle is not the same as RT

Russia has revoked Deutsche Welle's broadcast license and shut down DW's office in Moscow, after German regulators banned Russian broadcaster RT Deutsch. But the two broadcasters are not the same.



DW is governed by the principle of state neutrality and overseen by an independent council

The Kremlin's decision to shut down DW's operations in Russia seems at first like a tit-for-tat response to the one by German regulators, made a day earlier, to ban Russian broadcaster RT Deutsch from broadcasting in Germany.

But there are significant differences both in the nature of the bans and in the regulations that govern the two foreign broadcasters themselves.

For the former, only RT's live content has been stopped by the German regulator, following its decision not to apply for a broadcast licence. On-demand and online content is unaffected, while RT's correspondents continue to be free to work in Berlin and attend government press conferences. Russia's decision to shut down DW's bureau in Moscow means DW journalists are no longer accredited to work in Russia.

The second point, about how the two broadcasters are governed, can best be summed up in the principle of "state neutrality."

After the experience of the Nazi dictatorship, the German media landscape was designed specifically to prevent those in power from controlling newspapers, broadcasting, and online media.

It is true that both Deutsche Welle and RT, once called Russia Today, are state-funded broadcasters aimed at foreign audiences. But to ensure that Deutsche Welle is allowed work independently and follow journalistic standards, it is not a part of the federal government's press office.

A system of public accountability

Instead, DW is regulated by public law. This means that though its funding comes from the federal budget, the director is accountable only to the DW Broadcasting Council, which also elects him for six years. And even if there is a change of government in Germany, as was the case recently, the director remains in office.

The Broadcasting Council has 17 honorary members: Representatives of civil society, trade unions, churches, and political parties. They see to it that Germany's foreign broadcasting follows DW's mandate, which is "to provide a forum for German and other points of view on essential topics, above all in politics, culture and economics, both in Europe and in other continents, with the aim of promoting understanding and exchange between cultures and peoples."

It is true that RT's English website also states: "RT is an autonomous, non-profit organization that is publicly funded from the budget of the Russian Federation." But the website does not reveal much more about RT: Not about its budget, not about its structure, not about any supervisory bodies.

Independent of government

What seems clear is that there is no principle of state neutrality governing RT, as is required for DW. When Time magazine's Moscow correspondent Simon Shuster visited RT Editor-in-Chief Margareta Simonyan in her office in 2015, he noticed an old-fashioned yellow telephone on her desk. It was her secure line directly to the Kremlin, Simonyan admitted to Shuster, "to discuss secret things." She has been RT's editor-in-chief since its inception in 2005.

In an interview with Russian daily Kommersant in 2012, Simonyan said she saw RT as part of an information war with the Western world, and compared the broadcaster's role to that of the Defense Ministry.

"The Defense Ministry was fighting with Georgia, but we were conducting the information war, and what's more, against the whole Western world," she said. "It's impossible to start making a weapon only when the war has already started! That's why the Defense Ministry isn't fighting anyone at the moment, but it's ready for defense. So are we."
'An instrument of Russian foreign policy'

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that RT "cannot but reflect the official position of the Russian government on events in our country and the rest of the world." Speaking to broadcaster SWR, Stefan Meister, Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, described RT as a propaganda channel: "It is an instrument of Russian foreign policy with very specific goals. It is a channel controlled by the Foreign Ministry, among others, but also by other state institutions."

There are also differences in the way the foreign media are handled within the country. This is illustrated by the broadcasting ban imposed on RT in Germany by an independent media supervisory authority, the Commission for Licensing and Supervision of the Berlin-Brandenburg Media Authority, which is not a government agency.

The commission justified its broadcasting ban on RT DE by stating that the "required media law license is missing." In other words, the broadcast license had never been applied for, though broadcasting began last December — perhaps because of the state neutrality requirement. Germany's Media Treaty, which regulates the rights of broadcasters in Germany, prohibits — except in exceptional cases — the granting of broadcasting licenses to state bodies in Germany and abroad.

However, RT's parent organization TV Novosti holds a broadcasting license for RT DE in Serbia and considers it sufficient. The German media supervisory authority disagrees, and considers itself responsible because RT's German broadcaster has its headquarters in Berlin.

While DW journalists have now had their accreditations revoked, RT journalists can continue to work in Germany, protected by the principle of press freedom. RT journalists, for example, still regularly sit in on press conferences held by the German government. RT DE can continue to operate its website and can distribute videos — but not stream them live.

In Russia, foreign correspondents must obtain accreditation via an often opaque approval process. In Germany, RT DE can hire journalists and reporters without accreditation, like any other broadcaster.

Meanwhile, the closure of DW's Moscow bureau and the end of DW's broadcasting in Russia was announced by the Russian Foreign Ministry — clearly an indication that the move was politically motivated. Russia said it was reacting to the "unfriendly actions of the Federal Republic of Germany" towards RT DE.

Meanwhile, Russia ranks 150th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.

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Trump’s Operation Warp Speed ‘very helpful’ for COVID vaccine development: author

Max Zahn with Andy Serwer
27 January 2022·

Former president Donald Trump in recent weeks has intensified his public support for COVID-19 vaccines, revealing that he received a booster shot and denouncing politicians who withhold their booster status as "gutless."

The flurry of remarks comes as some public health experts have called for a second version of the Trump administration's vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed, in response to the emergence of variants like Omicron, Axios reports.

But the push for a new iteration of the vaccine program rekindles debate about the successes and failures of the first initiative.

In a new interview, Gregory Zuckerman — an investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal and author of "A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine" — says Operation Warp Speed was "very helpful" to U.S. vaccine development, despite some missteps.

"Like most every other topic in society today, it's sort of black and white," Zuckerman told Yahoo Finance on Nov. 15, before the detection of the Omicron variant. "Either Operation Warp Speed saves everything, and we have to give Donald Trump all the credit, or it was useless."

"I come down somewhere in the middle, meaning that Operation Warp Speed was very helpful," he adds. "There was a lot of money that was given to these companies [and] resources too, little parts that were necessary from all over the country that were brought to the necessary spots.”

Launched in April 2020, Operation Warp Speed drew on $14 billion in federal investment to foster public-private partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.

While Pfizer (PFE) declined government funding for research, it later sold its vaccine to the U.S. for $2 billion. On the other hand, Moderna (MRNA) accepted a total of $4.1 billion in public investment for research and development as well as the acquisition of 200 million doses.

The program helped the U.S. develop a vaccine over a short timespan of 10 months, far less than the 10 years it took to develop a measles vaccine or the 16 years it took to achieve a Hepatitis B vaccine, McKinsey & Company noted in a report last March.

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But Operation Warp Speed wasn't perfect. The program spent $1.2 billion on the purchase of 300 million doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. U.S. health authorities still have not approved that vaccine.

Despite the ultimate success of the Moderna vaccine, Operation Warp Speed focused its early investment and attention on the AstraZeneca candidate, Zuckerman said.

"You have to remember that Warp Speed made an early bet on a different vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine," Zuckerman says. "It did not give money to Moderna early on when it was desperate for money."

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at an Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 8, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

To be sure, Trump has opposed some vaccine-related policies — especially mandates. Earlier this month, he urged supporters to "rise up" against possible vaccine mandates for young children, Business Insider reported.

All three Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump joined the majority earlier this month in rejecting the Biden administration's vaccine-or-test rule for businesses with more than 100 employees.

Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Zuckerman noted that Operation Warp Speed contributed to U.S. vaccine development but doesn't account entirely for its success.

"Warp Speed was very helpful," he says. "But you don't want to say it was all due to Warp Speed — the success of these remarkable vaccines."

Singapore foreign workforce shows rebound from pandemic hit

A resumption in entry approvals for fully vaccinated construction workers from early November drove the rise in non-resident employment during the last quarter. (PHOTO: REUTERS/Edgar Su)

By Low De Wei

(Bloomberg) — Singapore’s non-resident workforce expanded for the first time in two years last quarter, driven by an increase in the construction sector after some border restrictions were eased.

That helped push total employment up by 47,400 in the quarter, the Ministry of Manpower said Friday, as a pick-up in local resident hires also gained pace driven by seasonal hiring in the service and retail sectors and growing demand in areas like IT and financial services.

For December, the seasonally-adjusted overall unemployment rate narrowed to 2.4%, from 2.5% the previous month, the ministry said.

“The unemployment situation continued to improve, and we could expect unemployment rates to decline to pre-Covid levels in the months ahead,” the ministry said in a statement.

The finance and trade hub, which relies on foreign labor across all sectors, has been easing travel restrictions in recent months to alleviate a workforce crunch. Last week, economists at Morgan Stanley warned that labor constraints may further drive inflation, with the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed last year jumping to 2.1, the highest in more than two decades.

Singapore saw a record decline in its population last year, as foreign workers, students and residents left the country after strict border curbs were imposed. The current monthly inflow of foreign workers has more than doubled compared to when entry restrictions were in place last year, Tan Kiat How, minister of state for the Ministry of National Development, said in a speech this week, without providing figures.

A resumption in entry approvals for fully vaccinated construction workers from early November drove the rise in non-resident employment during the last quarter, even as the foreign workforce in other sectors remained relatively flat, the ministry said. Detailed figures will be published in March.

© 2022 Bloomberg L.P.

ROFLMAO

Why the NFL owners are exclusive socialists

Andy Serwer with Max Zahn

29 January 2022·

Did the football gods know that with the stock market giving us migraines, the NFL playoff games needed to be extra awesome? We’ll see if the trend continues this weekend when the league's final four teams take the field.

One thing’s for sure, the NFL is back, baby (as the late Al Davis might have said.) Back from COVID-19. Back from the kneeling controversy. The instant-classic-in-the-snow 49ers-Packers game was the most-watched TV show on a Saturday night in 28 years. And no one’s happier about all this than the 32 owners of the NFL’s teams.

The NFL owners are a fascinating bunch really. Family businesses essentially, they’re mostly all-white, male, of course rich and GOP-friendly — but beyond the homogeneity, each has its own uniquely American story. As we enter the NFL’s high season I wanted to take a look at this group, specifically the four still in the hunt; the Rams, the 49ers, the Chiefs and the Bengals, who turn out to be emblematic.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, right, and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, left, take a break while filming a Papa John's commercial at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Tx., Wednesday, September 1, 2010. (Brandon Wade/AP for Papa John's)

Forbes, which does a nice job of tracking these franchises, reports the average team is now worth $3.5 billion. Yahoo Finance's Max Zahn calculates that the overall total net worth of the owners is $154.3 billion, meaning that almost three-fourths of their net worth was from their teams.

That’s quite a chunk of change. We’re used to seeing lists of rich folks whose wealth is primarily in shares of publicly traded companies, i.e Elon, Bezos and Zuck. The NFL owners are a parallel universe of private wealth, and as such are one of greatest under-recognized power centers in our country. They don’t call this America’s most exclusive club for nothing.

“Pete Rozelle convinced the owners that if they shared revenue and created the ability for teams in smaller markets to be successful, they would supplant baseball as America’s pastime,” says Mark Rosentraub, a sports management professor at the University of Michigan. “He was right and they did it.”

Los Angeles Rams tight end Brycen Hopkins (88) warms up before an NFL wild-card playoff football game against the Arizona Cardinals in Inglewood, Calif., Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Here then are the final four:

Cincinnati Bengals

Mike Brown owns the Bengals, the surprise team of the playoffs, which had been known primarily for its futility. The Bengals are a family affair and tied to football royalty. Brown, 86, is the son of legendary Cleveland Browns Coach Paul Brown who founded the Bengals in 1968. Mike played quarterback at Dartmouth and graduated from Harvard law school. He acted as GM for many years until handing off to a group led by daughter Katie Blackburn (who played ice hockey at Big Green) and is married to team VP Troy Blackburn. The team's recent success has everything to do with wunderkind quarterback Joe Burrow. Interestingly, Brown has long proselytized about how key the quarterback position is.

Kansas City Chiefs

Clark Hunt, son of legendary Texas businessman Lamar Hunt, owns the Chiefs. Lamar, (son of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt), formed the team as the Dallas Texans in 1960 as part of the American Football League and then moved it to Kansas City three years later. Lamar, who coined the term "Super Bowl," tried to corner the silver market in the 1970s and 1980s with his brother Nelson Bunker Hunt, which ended badly. Clark, 56, went to SMU where he captained the soccer team and later worked at Goldman Sachs. (Both his wife and daughter won Miss Kansas USA — 28 years apart.) The Chiefs have actually been pretty good since 2013, but beginning in 2018 when Patrick Mahomes stepped in as quarterback, they’ve become an NFL powerhouse, winning the Super Bowl in 2019.

Los Angeles Rams

The Rams are owned by Stan Kroenke, who’s married to Ann Walton Kroenke, daughter of the late Bud Walton, Walmart co-founder — along with his higher-profile and wealthier brother — the late Sam Walton. Kroenke, 74, made much of his money building real estate projects near Walmarts. Today he runs Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which also owns the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche and the iconic English soccer team, Arsenal. The Rams played in LA from 1946 until 1994, whereupon they moved to St. Louis. Kroenke took control of the team in 2009 and maneuvered it back to LA in 2016. That upset the city fathers of St. Louis, who sued the NFL and Kroenke. The parties settled last November with the League agreeing to pay St. Louis $790 million, which includes money coming from Kroenke, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Ouch.

San Francisco 49ers

Real estate developer Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. bought the Niners in 1977 for some $13 million and his family — with son Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., 75, running point for many years — has owned the team ever since. The 49ers are now said to be worth some $4 billion. NB: $13 million from 1977 is worth $60 million in today’s dollars, so that’s worked out well. The team won five Super Bowls in 14 years with Joe Montana et al, but less happy was that DeBartolo Jr. got wrapped up in the 1998 corruption case of Edwin Edwards, former governor of Louisiana. DeBartolo pleaded guilty and was fined. (In February 2020, then-President Trump granted him a pardon.) In 2000, DeBartolo turned over the team to his sister Denise DeBartolo York and her husband John. Denise and John's son, Jed, is the current president.

San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) hugs former owner and current co-chair of the 49ers Denise DeBartolo York during the fourth quarter of an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals in San Francisco, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. The 49ers won 27-13. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

There’s an irony here these zealots of free enterprise might not appreciate. “Capitalism generally weeds out the weak but things like the NFL operate with a form of socialism, meaning that you can’t get thrown out of the league and if you have a really bad year. We give you a high draft pick so you get back into the picture,” notes Rick Burton, a professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University. “We don’t have 32 major computer companies, but we can have 32 owners. There’s not going to be consolidation in the marketplace — there aren't going to be market forces that force you out of business.”

Socialism? Hmm. Something to argue about — or not — during halftime.

Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @serwer

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Crypto's 'Tornado Cash' fans money laundering fears, may be 'tip of the iceberg'

David Hollerith

·Senior Reporter

Sun, 30 January 2022,

On January 17th, with cryptocurrency prices being widely routed by risk aversion, Crypto.com flagged a "security incident" that caused the operation to freeze withdrawals.

Days later, the Singapore-based exchange announced that hackers had stolen at least $15 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) tokens — and potentially as much as $33 million, according to independent estimates — but pledged to reimburse those affected. Crypto.com faulted some accounts for a lack of 2-factor authentication for the breach, but didn't provide many other details.

However, information security specialists and amateur blockchain sleuths on Twitter were already tracing the hacked funds, with almost half pointing to a non-custodial Decentralized Finance (DeFi) mixing service called Tornado Cash. That's where the trail goes cold.

Tornado Cash (TORN), itself a smart contract token, is one of a few legal cryptocurrency mixing (or "tumbling") protocols that can be used to obfuscate transaction history.

It can also wash crypto proceeds in ways that are raising alarm among investors and law enforcement — already grappling with a rise in the sector's illicit activity amid a sharpening debate over how to provide regulatory oversight to the booming digital coin movement.

Experts say blockchain mixing services aren't necessarily illicit, even though hackers use them. While part of the growing crypto ecosystem, mixers offer a handy way for criminals to launder funds without being explicitly classified as money laundering.

Still, in December, hackers used Tornado Cash to wash $196 million of crypto stolen from Bitmart, a crypto exchange. According to Victor Fang, CEO and Founder of blockchain analytics firm Anchain.AI, Tornado Cash uses zero knowledge proof.

"This is advanced cryptography, Turing-awarded work from MIT, the highest award in computer science" explained Fang, who chuckled in awe of the technology underpinning the protocol.

Over the past year, Tornado Cash serviced over $10 billion worth of crypto transaction according to Anchain, with a rising number of criminal cases being managed by Fang's firm involving the protocol.

“Privacy is not criminal but criminals are seeking these privacy solutions. This is the tip of the iceberg, the beginning of the future we’re going to see play out,” he added.

Billions in loot being laundered

Money laundering, especially the digital coin variety, is notoriously difficult to track. The United Nations estimates that around 2-5% of global growth (roughly $2 trillion) gets laundered in fiat currencies each year, but the figure is not regularly updated.

Currently, crypto's market capitalization tops $1.7 trillion, and experts insist crime is a shrinking margin of those flows. However, there's still $8.6 billion in blockchain-based loot getting laundered, according to a report released Wednesday by blockchain analytics company Chainalysis.

The firm previously found that crypto-based crime hit an historical high at $14 billion, but at 0.15% of all sector transactions is relatively low. Chainalysis tracked crypto money laundering over the past year, but did not count funds coming from mixing services as illicit, according to Chainalysis' director of research Kim Grauer.

Yet billions in laundered funds were up 30% in 2021 compare to the prior year, and represent the amount of money sent from a crypto wallet that the firm marked as illicit. Those funds then went to another platform for trading, gambling, DeFi, mixing, or other purposes.

And according to Grauer, tracking illicit flows come only from “multi-decade-long and hard-won investigations” into specific financial firms. The rise of the use of digital ledgers, however, could make it easier, some say.

“We can’t say cryptocurrency is better for fighting crime but there’s no equivalent data set for measuring criminal activity in fiat currencies," Grauer told Yahoo Finance.

Mixing services still represent a slim margin for the destination of illicit crypto funds according to Chainalysis data. Yet based on conversations with compliance officers, Grauer said that customer funds sent from a mixing service can be a “red flag,” with firms receiving a significant amount of funds from mixers.

The "blank check"

A representations of cryptocurrency Ethereum is seen in front of a stock graph and U.S. dollar in this illustration taken, January 24, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

While algorithmic tools offer precise data, curbing crypto laundering relies on coordination between law enforcement and private companies, which in the eyes of regulators need improvement.

The DeFi boom has also fed money laundering, with illicit wallet use up from 2% in 2020 to 17% over the past year, reflecting the sector's high rate of theft. Still, crypto exchanges remain the primary method for thieves to wash hot money, with those receiving 47% of total illicit funds tracked over the last year, largely because of scams.

One way to halt illicit crypto flows hinges around blocking, or at least monitoring exit points, out of the cryptocurrency economy that give criminals on- and off-ramps chance to convert their loot into less traceable cash. Increasingly, regulators want to shore up their surveillance and reach at these critical junctures.

Congress is debating a measure that grants the U.S. Treasury broad authority to prohibit or freeze certain digital asset, particularly if they relate to foreign banking institutions, transactions or if "1 or more types of accounts is of primary money laundering concern."

Amid a broad debate about crypto regulation, some market players see the provision as a "blank check" for regulators to muzzle crypto's privacy and commerce benefits. Two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX and Binance, both qualify as foreign banking institutions though they both have U.S. subsidiaries. In theory. they could run afoul of Treasury's interpretation of that statute, some argue.

If cryptocurrency is ever going to get "traction, there has got to be more regulatory constructs around it," according to David Cass, a former crypto and stablecoin researcher at the Federal Reserve who's now a partner with Law and Forensics, a legal and investigations firm.

The marketing of Tornado Cash and other crypto mixers may affect how regulators "facilitate cooperation with those services, Daniel Garrie, Law and Forensics' co-founder, told Yahoo Finance.

“They can say if you are found to interact or engage with this, you're not allowed to participate in the U.S. banking system, something like that but there are a lot of caveats,” Garrie said.

David Hollerith covers cryptocurrency for Yahoo Finance. Follow him @dshollers.

World Bank's Malpass: 

Poorer countries face 'double whammy' 

on debt as pandemic rages

Brian Cheung

·Reporter

Tue, 1 February 2022

The World Bank warns that the poorest countries, saddled with debt and still vulnerable to the virus, are at risk of being left behind in the COVID-19 recovery.

World Bank Group President David Malpass told Yahoo Finance Tuesday that the more impoverished nations lack the luxury of easily financing large fiscal packages to counteract the economic impacts of the virus.

Even if a country wanted to issue sovereign debt to pay for COVID relief measures, Malpass said advanced nations — like the U.S. — are already taking a lot of space in the market for government bonds.

“You’ve got this double whammy,” Malpass said. “[Poorer countries] are paying a very rich interest rate to the advanced economies at a time when the advanced economies themselves are borrowing heavily in global markets.”

The World Bank has bucketed 74 countries into its International Development Association (IDA). Those countries are able to access IDA resources to not only finance poverty-reducing projects — but coordinate debt relief.

'Needs are really big'

The World Bank estimates that just this year, about $35 billion in bilateral and private debt-service payments will become due on both public and private guaranteed debt of those IDA countries. Malpass said the World Bank’s support is “just not enough to make up for all the money that’s coming out of them" as they pay their creditors.

One strategy: locking in lower rates as central banks look to raise interest rates. Higher borrowing costs could burden those lower income countries with higher debt payments, which is why Malpass says the World Bank is trying to help countries lengthen the terms of their borrowings to “lock” in lower rates.

“They don’t have access to government bond markets that are robust, so this is going to cause lasting challenges for the poor,” Malpass said.

World Bank President David Malpass attends the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 3, 2021. REUTERS/Yves Herman

In lower income countries, an estimated 4% of people are vaccinated. An inability to improve vaccine distribution and take up in those countries may further strand those countries through the recovery.

In the World Bank’s updated Global Economic Prospects report released this month, worldwide GDP is forecast to decelerate, from 5.5% in 2021 to 4.1% in 2022 and 3.2% in 2023.

Advanced economies are expected to fully recover to pre-pandemic trends of growth by 2023, emerging market and developing economies are forecast to remain 4% below pre-pandemic trend.

“The needs are really big,” Malpass said.