Shipping companies ask crew to abandon ships stuck in Ukraine

11 March 2022 - BY ANN KOH

Ukraine’s ports closed on February 24, when Russian troops began their incursion.
Image: Bloomberg

Some shipowners have begun to ask crew to abandon their ships stuck off the coast of Ukraine, as Russia’s invasion of its neighbour reached the end of its second week.

M.T. Maritime has evacuated 22 Filipino seafarers from its oil-products tanker MTM Rio Grande, leaving the vessel unmanned and moored at Nika-Tera port in Ukraine, the company said in an emailed reply to queries. The crew are currently in Romania waiting for a flight back to the Philippines, it said.

Ukraine’s ports closed on February 24, when Russian troops began their incursion. At least five out of 140 ships stuck in the country’s waters have been hit by explosions, killing a Bangladeshi seafarer.

As intense fighting and shelling continues across cities in Ukraine — a key grains exporter — ship owners are grappling with dwindling food supplies and the possibility of a protracted war, according to people with knowledge of ships in the area. That’s forcing some owners to ask their crew to abandon vessels, they said.

More than 1,000 seafarers are estimated to be on-board ships stranded in Ukraine, some with cargo still on-board. The vessels — which include tankers, bulkers, cargo ships and a container vessel — aren’t able to leave because there aren’t harbour pilots to guide them out amid danger from missiles and underwater mines.

“We understand some ships may have been laid up,” said a spokespersons for the International Maritime Organization, an agency of the United Nations, without providing further details.

China: US Should Fully Apply New Forced Labor Law

Supply Chain Transparency, Meaningful Penalties Crucial

Click to expand Image

Planting of a cotton field in China’s Xinjiang region, during a government-organized trip for foreign journalists, near Urumqi, April 21, 2021. 

 © 2021 AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

(Washington, DC) – The new US forced labor law should heighten scrutiny of company supply chains that are linked to forced labor in China, Human Rights Watch said today in a submission to the federal Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF). The law should also result in increased civil and criminal penalties for companies that import products linked to forced labor.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), signed into law by President Joe Biden in December 2021, creates a presumption that goods made in whole or in part in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, or produced by entities in China linked to forced labor, cannot be imported into the United States. Since 2017, China has detained as many as one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and subjected them to various abuses that amount to crimes against humanity, including subjecting detainees and other Turkic Muslims to forced labor inside and outside Xinjiang.

“The US government has a powerful new tool to ensure that companies are not complicit in forced labor, but enforcement is everything,” said Jim Wormington, senior business and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should require importers to disclose their supply chains to identify links to Xinjiang or other forced labor sites, and should hold companies accountable where they or their suppliers continue to exploit forced labor.”

The multiagency taskforce chaired by the Department of Homeland Security on January 24, 2022, requested input into the strategy the US government should use to enforce the new forced labor law. The law builds on existing US legislation, the 1930 Tariff Act, which banned the import of “all goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part” by forced labor. Since 2019, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a dozen orders requiring the seizure of certain categories of products from Xinjiang, including a January 2021 order covering all cotton and tomato products produced in whole or in part from Xinjiang.

The new law goes further by requiring customs officers to apply a requirement, scheduled to go into effect on June 21, that presumes that any goods “mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part” in Xinjiang are produced with forced labor and so prohibited from entry to the US. The presumption also applies to goods produced by entities – whether in Xinjiang or elsewhere in China – that the US government lists as linked to forced labor.

The new law states that companies can rebut the presumption against imports by providing “clear and convincing evidence” that goods are not linked to forced labor. However, the extent of Chinese government surveillance and threats to workers and auditors in Xinjiang currently make it impossible for companies to provide credible evidence that they or their suppliers in the region are free of forced labor. Even elsewhere in China, the arrests of labor activists, a prohibition on independent trade unions, government surveillance, and the Chinese government’s anti-sanctions laws pose serious obstacles to identifying and remediating the risk of forced labor and other human rights abuses.

In its submission to the task force, Human Rights Watch underscored that the most effective way to identify Xinjiang-linked goods would be to require all brands and retailers importing into the US to map their global supply chains, from raw materials to manufacturers, and disclose them in a time-bound manner. The task force should consider whether imposing this requirement is possible using existing executive powers and, if not, should recommend new legislation requiring mandatory supply chain mapping and disclosure and comprehensive human rights due diligence.

Customs and Border Protection’s own efforts to identify products from Xinjiang or from entities linked to forced labor should focus on high-risk sectors, including the priority sectors (cotton, tomatoes, and polysilicon) identified in the new law itself. Customs officers should identify which importers in high-priority sectors are at highest risk of forced labor links and should request information from those companies on their supply chains and their efforts to identify and address forced labor. If targeted importers fail to respond to questions, or provide inadequate information, Customs and Border Protection should view this as evidence that the products include material from Xinjiang or from entities linked to forced labor and are barred from import under the new law.

To demonstrate that it is effectively enforcing forced labor import bans, Customs and Border Protection should be transparent about its enforcement actions. It should disclose when it holds, re-exports, excludes, or seizes goods, including information on the company importing the banned goods; the nature of the goods; their approximate value; and the reason for the enforcement action. The US government should also impose financial penalties on companies for importing or attempting to import goods linked to forced labor and utilize laws such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to criminally prosecute individuals and corporations for their roles in imports linked for forced labor.

“US importers should no longer be able to plead ignorance over their links to forced labor in China and the Xinjiang region specifically,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Companies with operations, suppliers, or sub-suppliers in Xinjiang should quickly exit the region or risk seeing their goods seized at the US border and their businesses subject to civil and criminal penalties.”

The NATO campaign against Russia will drive escalating class struggle across the world

Tom Hall
WSWS.ORG

The reckless escalation of economic, political and military pressure by the United States and NATO against Russia is rapidly leading to a major global economic crisis with serious repercussions for the international working class.

At least 2,000 striking Minneapolis teachers, support staff and their supporters rallied outside the State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)

The campaign against Russia, which includes a crippling sanctions regime aimed at starving out the Russian people which has all but cut off Russia from the world economy, is aimed at the conversion of that country into a colony of western imperialism and the plundering of its natural resources. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, while it is reactionary and must be opposed, is the product of a years-long campaign of escalating provocations by NATO against Russia, using Ukraine as bait.

Millions around the world look at the unfolding events in eastern Europe with anxiety and fear that they could rapidly escalate into a nuclear war. But the crisis is also triggering immense economic dislocation that is driving towards a massive explosion of class conflict. The orientation of those who seek to oppose the drive to a third World War must be, as Leon Trotsky observed in 1934, not to the war map, but to the map of the class struggle.

In a statement last week on the economic impact of the war and western sanctions against Russia, the International Monetary Fund predicted, “Price shocks will have an impact worldwide, especially on poor households for whom food and fuel are a higher proportion of expenses. Should the conflict escalate, the economic damage would be all the more devastating. The sanctions on Russia will also have a substantial impact on the global economy and financial markets, with significant spillovers to other countries.”

This is already beginning to take place. Oil prices have reached $130 per barrel, and in the United States, gasoline prices at the pumps have surged past $4 a gallon to their highest levels ever. In France, the price of gas has gone from €1.65 per liter at the end of last year to €2.20 per liter, or $9.16 per gallon. Wheat futures have already risen by 70 percent this year–Russia and Ukraine together account for one-quarter of all grain exports. In Europe, industrial production is beginning to shut down due to soaring energy prices.

In the month of February, US inflation reached 7.9 percent, and in the Eurozone it reached 5.8 percent, the highest level on record since the creation of the single currency in 1997. Inflation is expected to rise sharply in March as the consequences of sanctions reverberate throughout the world economy.

But among the worst hit will be developing countries in Africa and the Middle East. Starvation and famine in this region of the world is a real possibility. Eighty percent of grain in Egypt is purchased from Russia. Other major importers of Russian grain include Turkey, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Yemen.

The impact on the working class will be enormous. It is already reeling from more than two years of the pandemic, in which millions have died and living standards have been eroded to the breaking point by inflation caused by pandemic-induced chaos in global supply chains. This social trauma is the product of deliberate rejection of necessary public health measures by the world’s governments, above all the United States, in the name of “herd immunity,” or the sacrificing of life to profit.

Governments are using Ukraine to deflect attention from the war which should be waged against the pandemic, which is not over and is already beginning to surge again. They are also using it to recast inflation, which was already at its highest level in decades before, as a “Putin price hike” entirely the fault of Russia, in an attempt to deflect economic anxiety towards hatred of a foreign enemy. But while the wealthiest layers of society, including the most privileged layers of the middle class, have been gripped with war hysteria, there are no signs that this campaign is having any significant effect within the working class.

In a speech last week announcing a ban on Russian oil imports to the United States, President Biden presented the economic impact of these measures in the United States as a necessary sacrifice in the name of “defending freedom.” But neither Biden nor anyone else ever bothered to ask workers in the United States, much less workers in Africa and the developing world, whether they wanted to make such sacrifices for a reckless campaign which raises the danger of World War III.

No such sacrifices are being demanded of the corporate oligarchy, who will make money hand over fist from the war just as they have during the pandemic. Indeed, the stock prices of major US defense contractors such as Northrup Grumman and Raytheon have risen sharply in recent weeks. Western oil companies and agribusiness are also licking their chops at the prospects of superprofits from worldwide shortages derived from the removal of their Russian rivals.

The war in Ukraine is being used as cover to redirect billions in resources away from social programs benefiting the working class towards war. The latest spending bill making its way through Congress includes nearly $800 billion for the military, including $15 billion in spending for Ukraine, while omitting $15 billion in pandemic-related funding. The corporate media in Britain is calling for the gutting of the postwar welfare state for the sake of increasing military spending. Most ominously, Germany has rammed through a tripling of the military budget for this year, the largest increase since Adolf Hitler.

The attitude of the ruling class was summed up most crudely and bluntly by a Wall Street Journal editorial, whose headline declared, “NATO Needs More Guns and Less Butter.” The phrase recalls the infamous statement by Hermann Goering that “iron has always made an empire strong, at most butter and lard have made the people fat.”

The social consequences of this reckless campaign are preparations for a showdown between the working class and the capitalist class in each country, in which mass anger will intersect with the growing radicalization which is already underway as a consequence of the pandemic. The past two years have seen major strikes by industrial workers in the United States, the growth of wildcat strikes throughout Turkey, the defiance of anti-strike injunctions by healthcare workers in Sri Lanka and Australia, and other significant expressions of social opposition.

The ruling class itself is deeply concerned about this possibility, and nervous comments in the press have appeared comparing the current situation to the oil shocks of the 1970s, which drove a major strike wave in industrialized countries, as well as the Arab Spring of 2011, in which mass anger over the cost of living fueled revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

The response of capitalist governments claiming to be “defending freedom” in Ukraine will inevitably involve the greater use of state repression, including injunctions, anti-strike legislation, executive orders and other measures to suppress working class opposition at home. Already, an anti-strike injunction has been issued against 17,000 BNSF railroad workers in the United States, justified on the basis of protecting national supply chains. Many more such measures can be expected.

This campaign of repression also directly involves the cooperation of the pro-corporate unions. The United Steelworkers is openly boasting of its sellout “non-inflationary” contract limiting wage increases for 30,000 US oil refinery workers to 3 percent, an agreement which was worked out in direct behind-the-scenes personal discussions between USW head Tom Conway and Biden. At the same time, the corporate press will be counted on to brand any resistance from workers as the result of Russian sabotage, with workers acting as “Putin’s patsies,” as the British press recently branded striking London underground workers.

The social basis for the fight against war is the international working class. In contrast to the capitalist ruling class and the most privileged layers of the middle class, the social interests of the working class are irreconcilably opposed to war. Workers have nothing to gain from war, but as always will be made to foot the bill.

While Biden and other heads of state preach “national unity” in the name of fighting Russia, the consequences of the drive to war and the divergent responses of different layers in society will more and more openly reveal that the real dividing line in world society is not between NATO and Russia, but between the working class and the capitalist class in all countries.

Above all, the squandering of social resources for war raises the basic conflict between the capitalist system, which is based on the private accumulation of profit and national rivalries leading inevitably to war, with the maintenance and growth of a modern industrial society. The fight against war, therefore, must be rooted in a socialist movement in the working class to bring an end to the capitalist system.

UN says not aware of biological weapons programme in Ukraine

US envoy to UN rejects Moscow’s unproven claims that Ukraine is operating biological weapons labs with US support.

Russian ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya's claim that Ukraine has a biological weapons programme was widely denounced at the UN Security Council on Friday [Carlo Allegri/Reuters]

Published On 11 Mar 2022

The United Nations has said it is not aware of a biological weapons programme in Ukraine, as Russia’s claim that such a programme exists was rejected by Washington and its allies at an emergency Security Council meeting.

Russia called the meeting on Friday to discuss its unproven allegations that Ukraine is operating biological weapons laboratories with support from the United States.

Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, told the 15-member council that the UN is “not aware of any biological weapons programmes” in Ukraine.

Nakamitsu said both Ukraine and Russia are state parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), an international treaty that prohibits such weapons. “Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975,” she added.



The discussion came amid Russia’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24 and has since seen Russian troops launch attacks on Ukrainian cities and advance towards the capital, Kyiv. The conflict has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine so far.

The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said during Friday’s UN Security Council meeting that Moscow had discovered a network of 30 biological weapons labs in Ukraine.

But that was rejected by Nebenzia’s US counterpart, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who accused Russia of “attempting to use the Security Council to legitimise disinformation and deceive people to justify President [Vladimir] Putin’s war of choice against the Ukrainian people”.

“I will say this once: Ukraine does not have a biological weapons programme. There are no Ukranian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States, not near Russia’s border or anywhere,” Thomas-Greenfield told the council.

Under a 2005 agreement, the Pentagon has assisted several Ukrainian public health laboratories with improving the security of dangerous pathogens and technology used to research. Those efforts have been supported by other countries and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that it had advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in its public health laboratories to prevent “any potential spills” that would spread disease among the population.

The White House earlier this week rejected as “preposterous” Russia’s allegations that the US is operating biowarfare labs in Ukraine, accusing the Kremlin of preparing a pretext to use chemical or biological weapons in its offensive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also dismissed Russia’s allegations in a video address on Thursday, saying, “No one is developing any chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction” in Ukraine.

Barbara Woodward, the British ambassador to the UN, also forcefully rejected the Russian allegations, telling the Security Council that Moscow had made “a series of wild, completely baseless and irresponsible conspiracy theories”.

“There is not a shred of credible evidence that Ukraine has a biological weapons programme … This is yet another lie in Russia’s disinformation campaign.”

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from the UN on Friday, noted that China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, was the only member of the Security Council to have given “any credence whatsoever” to Russia’s claims.

“However, he was somewhat restrained in terms of his tone, calling very moderately for a full investigation because of the danger of any form of military and biological warfare,” Hanna said. “Also making very clear that China would want to take an active part in helping other nations secure a truce between Russia and Ukraine.”

Russia has been under growing international pressure to stop the war in Ukraine, with the US and the European Union issuing a wide range of sanctions against Russian leaders and oligarchs, as well as key drivers of the country’s economy, including the energy sector.

Earlier on Friday, US President Joe Biden announced that Washington was revoking Moscow’s “most favoured nation” trading status, a move that allows the US to impose higher tariffs on Russian products.

Warsaw overwhelmed as it becomes key refugee destination

By VANESSA GERA


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A boy holds a toy as he rests in a center for Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw, Poland, on Friday March 11, 2022. Warsaw has become overwhelmed by refugees, with more than a tenth of all those fleeing the war in Ukraine arriving in the Polish capital, and prompting Warsaw's mayor to appeal for international help. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)


WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Warsaw’s mayor is appealing for international help as the city becomes overwhelmed by refugees, with more than a tenth of all those fleeing the war in Ukraine arriving in the Polish capital.

Some seek to wait out the war or settle in the city, while others merely use Warsaw as a transit point to head further west, turning its train stations into crowded hubs where people are camping out on floors.

“We are dealing with the greatest migration crisis in the history of Europe since World War II. ... The situation is getting more and more difficult every day,” Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said, adding that “the greatest challenge is still ahead of us.”

The welcome Warsaw has given Ukrainians as the neighboring nation struggles to resist Russia’s invasion is wholehearted. Across the city, people have mobilized to help. They are taking Ukrainians into their homes, gathering donations and volunteering at reception centers. City monuments and buses fly Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag in solidarity.

But the challenge is enormous. Much of the burden so far is being carried by volunteers taking time off work, a situation not sustainable in the long run.

Trzaskowski noted on Friday that child psychologists, in one example, had been volunteering to help refugees but soon will need to return to their jobs.

Housing is also a growing problem. When the war began, 95% of Ukrainians arriving in Warsaw were people who already had friends or family here and were taken in by them. Today that group is 70% of the new arrivals meaning that 30% of them “need a roof over their heads” and other support, the mayor said Friday.

The decline in the city’s ability to absorb a massive number of new arrivals comes as the people fleeing war are those who have witnessed greater trauma than those who arrived earlier, or who are more vulnerable.

Late Thursday 15 disabled Ukrainian children arrived at the Medyka border crossing in Poland, and were put on a special makeshift medical train taking them to various hospitals in the country.

Dr. Dominik Daszuta, an anesthesiologist at Central Medical hospital MSWIA in Warsaw, described how the medical train was outfitted with intensive care capabilities. He spoke as medical staff lifted children in their strollers onto the train bound for Gdynia.

“At the beginning the people who came here were running away in panic from the war they saw in the media and that they heard about. Now we find there are people escaping from bombs,” said Dorota Zawadzka, a child psychologist volunteering at a center for refugees set up in the Torwar sports center.

“This is a completely different kind of refugee. They are afraid of everything. They sit in their jackets. Children are scared, they don’t want to play, their mothers have such empty eyes.”

Lena Nagirnyak, a 35-year-old from Kyiv, found shelter at Torwar with her children after initially hoping to stay in Ukraine. They finally fled on foot from Bucha to Irpin after hearing a bomber flying low overhead.

“The next day, the street we were walking on was bombed. If we had left a day later, we might have died,” she said.

The war has already forced 2.5 million people to flee, according to the International Organization for Migration on Friday, and more than half of those go to Poland. As of Friday more than 1.5 million refugees had entered Poland, according to the country’s Border Guard agency.

Trzaskowski said over 320,000 people have traveled through Warsaw since the start of the war and 230,000 people were staying in the city of more than 1.7 million.

Other parts of the region are also under strain. Even the Czech Republic, which does not border Ukraine directly, has an estimated 200,000 refugees, many in Prague. As the capital runs out of housing options, city hall has begun preparing temporary accommodation.

“The demand for accommodation in Prague is enormous and by far surpasses what we can offer,” Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib said.

Meanwhile, the national government appealed to Czech citizens to house refugees in their own homes, promising that it would find a way to compensate them.

Poland has already taken a similar step, with the parliament approving a law offering people 40 zlotys ($9.20) per day for each refugee they give shelter to. It’s part of a new legislative package that also offers some financial help and health insurance to the Ukrainians.

In Poland’s western neighbor, Germany, the influx so far has been concentrated on on the capital, Berlin, which is about an hour from the Polish border and the main destination for trains and buses from Poland.

Authorities there have been seeing over 10,000 people per day arrive. Officials are trying to spread new arrivals around the country, noting that they have better chances of getting somewhere to live and quick access to medical care elsewhere in Germany.

On Friday, Germany’s Interior Ministry tweeted in several languages that “rumors that arrival and registration is only possible in Berlin” are not true and that they can register and receive help in any city in Germany.

___

Karel Janicek in Prague and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal - Canadian Red Cross

https://www.redcross.ca/donate/appeal/donate-to-the-ukraine...

The Canadian Red Cross is supporting the efforts of its Red Cross Movement partners to provide humanitarian assistance to those affected by the crisis in Ukraine. Your donation will: Allow the Red Cross to provide, among other things, food, water, medical supplies, shelter, psychological support, and mobile health teams.

Government of Canada pledges to match donations for …

https://www.redcross.ca/about-us/media-news/news-releases/government...

2022-02-25 · Global Affairs Canada will transfer the matching funds to the Canadian Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal which will support the efforts of the Red Cross Red Crescent

COVID-19 death toll may be 3 times higher than official record, study finds

Deidre McPhillips
CNNDigital
Friday, March 11, 2022 

The COVID-19 pandemic may have been three times deadlier than the reported death toll suggests.

Globally, official reports through the end of 2021 show that 6 million people have died directly because of COVID-19. But researchers estimate in a new study that from the start of 2020 through the end of 2021, there have been at least 18 million more deaths than researchers would typically expect over the course of two years.

Some of this excess mortality may have been missed in official counts due to lack of diagnostic or reporting resources. But some may be attributed to other indirect effects of the pandemic, such as lack of access to health care, behaviour changes during lockdowns or economic turmoil. There was not enough data to distinguish the cause of death.

Excess mortality is "a much more accurate measurement of the true impact of the pandemic" precisely because of the known issues in underreporting of direct COVID-19 deaths and because of the deadly indirect effects of the pandemic, said Haidong Wang, a demography specialist at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Researchers, led by Wang, analyzed all-cause mortality for 187 countries, using weekly or monthly reported data when available and creating models to estimate for others. Their study was published Thursday in the journal The Lancet.

They found that seven countries accounted for more than half of all excess deaths over the past two years: India, the United States, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Pakistan. There were more than 4 million excess deaths in India alone and more than 1.1 million in the United States.

For every 1,000 people in the world, the pandemic caused more than one excess death over the course of two years, according to the study.

The World Health Organization has also advocated for the importance of understanding broader COVID-related mortality. In February 2021, an advisory group was formed in partnership with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs to explore the topic.

"Gaps in high-quality, timely and disaggregated data are a major challenge in global health," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the group's inaugural meeting. "COVID-19 has created an unprecedented demand for this data. While we're all familiar with daily death tolls, total mortality figures are likely far higher."

An information page for the advisory group promotes the importance of understanding this data sooner rather than later to build an equitable response.

"Deaths directly attributable to COVID-19 provide only a narrow perspective of the wide ranging harms being caused by the pandemic. The collateral damage from COVID-19 is much wider," says a statement on the group's website. "It is important to quantify this now as it can inform choices that governments must make regarding prioritization between routine and emergency health systems."

Understanding excess mortality is also critically important to future estimates of global population and pandemic preparedness. But a recent WHO assessment of health information systems capacity found that in parts of Africa, only 10% of all deaths were being registered.

According to the new study, excess mortality rates over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have varied greatly by country and by region.

Bolivia, Bulgaria and Eswatini had the highest estimated excess mortality rate, each with more than six excess deaths for every 1,000 people. Excess mortality rates were also particularly high in their respective regions: Andean Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, and southern sub-Saharan Africa.

But five countries reported fewer deaths in 2020 and 2021 than prior trends would have predicted: Iceland, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Taiwan.

Cause of death needs to be investigated more, but the hypothesis is that strict lockdown policies in these countries led to fewer deaths from external factors such as traffic accidents, Wang said. Masking and social distancing have also led to reduced flu mortality in many countries.

"That's the impact of mediation policies or intervention strategies on all-cause mortality," he said.

Excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic varied widely within the United States, according to the study. Per capita, it was estimated to be nearly twice as high in Mississippi as it was in the nation overall, for example, but only half as high in Washington state.

"Some excess deaths in Texas are the result of the blackout there last year. And there are always deaths due to natural disasters," said Bob Anderson, chief mortality statistician at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was not involved in the new study.

"To some extent, the quality of reporting will depend on resources available to do things like postmortem testing. The jurisdictions with medical examiner's offices that have resources for death investigation are going to tend to do better than your local elected coroner."

AMERIKA; WHITE SUPREMACIST SOCIETY
Black Panther director mistaken for bank robber in Atlanta, US

Movie director Ryan Coogler was briefly handcuffed by the police after trying to withdraw more than $10,000 from a bank.

Photo: AP 

PUBLISHED A DAY AGO
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Movie director Ryan Coogler was briefly handcuffed by Atlanta police after he was mistaken for a robber when he passed a teller a note while trying to withdraw a large amount of cash from his account, police said.

The Black Panther director, who is Black, walked into a Bank of America branch, January 7 and passed the teller a withdrawal slip with a note written on the back asking her to “be discreet when handing him the cash,” according to a police report.

He was trying to withdraw more than $10,000, and the teller “received an alert notification” on her computer and quickly alerted her manager that Coogler was trying to rob the bank, the report says. The bank employee is a Black woman, the report says.

Police responding to the bank branch in the upscale Buckhead neighbourhood saw a black Lexus SUV parked out front with the engine running. An officer talked to the male driver who said he was waiting for Coogler, who was inside the bank. A female passenger gave police the same information.

A description of Coogler given by the driver matched the description of the man reported to have been trying to rob the bank, the report says. The officer detained both the driver and passenger in the back of a police vehicle but they were not placed in handcuffs.

Two other officers had gone inside the bank and led Coogler out in handcuffs.

Body camera video released by police shows officers approaching Coogler from behind as he stands at the counter wearing a light grey hooded sweatshirt, a black cap, sunglasses and a white mask. As an officer pulls his gun and another tells him to put his hands behind his back, Coogler says, “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?”

As he’s led from the bank, Coogler tells them he’s just trying to pull money out of his own account.

Police determined the whole thing was a mistake by the teller and Coogler “was never in the wrong,” the report says The handcuffs were immediately removed and the other two people were released from the back of the patrol vehicle.

Police can be seen on body camera video explaining to Coogler that they were responding to a call of a bank robbery and had to take appropriate precautions. Still sitting in the back of the police SUV, Coogler is seen on video looking down and shaking his head as the officer explains.

Coogler explained to the officers that a medical assistant who works for him prefers to be paid in cash. When he withdraws a large sum to pay her, he said, he passes the teller a note because he doesn’t want the cash run through a money counter right there because it attracts attention and makes him feel unsafe.

“I don’t know who made what call, who did what, but I just had guns drawn on me for taking money out of my own account,” Coogler told police.

The teller never indicated there was a problem and when she went to talk to her manager, other bank employees kept asking if he was being taken care of, he told officers. The next thing he knew, he heard guns being pulled from their holsters.

Another body camera video shows the teller explaining that Coogler gave her the withdrawal slip and after he inserted his debit card and asked to make a withdrawal, he pointed at the note instead of answering her questions. When she asked for his ID and he gave her a California ID, she said the transaction seemed odd and her “stomach started turning.”

When her computer notified her that it was a high-risk transaction, she went to speak to her manager. When she explained Coogler wanted $12,000 and the transaction made her feel uncomfortable, her manager suggested going to talk to him, she told officers. But she refused because she was pregnant and did not know if he had a gun, she said. She called 911.

“This situation should never have happened,” Coogler said in a statement to The New York Times, but he added that Bank of America “worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction and we have moved on.”

A representative for Coogler did not respond to messages from The Associated Press.

“We deeply regret that this incident occurred. It should never have happened and we have apologised to Mr. Coogler,” a statement from Bank of America says.

Released in 2018, the Marvel superhero film Black Panther became the year’s biggest film release, earning more than a billion dollars worldwide and inspiring “Wakanda Forever” salutes everywhere. The film was nominated for best picture; Coogler shared in the honour as one of the film’s producers. Work on the sequel has been happening in Georgia. The film is scheduled for release in November 2022.

While the director is best known for Black Panther, he also co-wrote the Rocky spin-off Creed. His breakout movie was writing and directing Fruitvale Station, about the last day of Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot by police in the Bay Area in 2009.

Pressure builds on Biden to repay Venezuela’s goodwill moves

By JOSHUA GOODMAN and REGINA GARCIA CANO

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Gas prices are displayed at a Mobil gas station in West Hollywood, Calif., Tuesday, March 8, 2022. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. hits a record $4.17 on Tuesday as the country prepares to ban Russian oil imports. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)


MIAMI (AP) — Pressure is building on the Biden administration to begin unwinding sanctions on Venezuela after President Nicolas Maduro freed two American prisoners and promised to resume negotiations with his opponents.

Maduro’s goodwill gesture came during a weekend trip to Caracas by senior White House and State Department officials that caught off guard Maduro’s friends and foes alike.

While the Biden administration is saying little about what was discussed behind closed doors, a smug Maduro — who has sought face-to-face talks with the U.S. for years — bragged that careful protocol was followed, with the flags of the two nations “beautifully united, as they should be.”

For the past five years, the U.S. has, with little success, tried everything from punishing oil sanctions to criminal indictments and support for clandestine coups in its campaign to remove Maduro and restore what it sees as Venezuela’s stolen democracy.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended the world order, forcing the U.S. to rethink its national security priorities.

Hostile petrostates under U.S. sanctions like Iran and Venezuela are seen as the most likely to benefit as President Joe Biden seeks to mitigate the impact from a ban on Russian oil imports that may aggravate the highest inflation in four decades.

Venezuelan oil might help ease inflation pressures, at least psychologically and in the medium term, even if it would take time for significant supplies to reach the U.S.

But while Venezuela is eager to win relaxation of the economically devastating sanctions, there were signs Thursday it’s not ready to immediately abandon ties to key ally Russia.

Only days after the U.S. talks, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez met in Turkey with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sideline of his talks with Ukraine, according to a photo tweet from Russia’s embassy in Caracas, though no details of their discussions were released.

Still, the approach has changed in Washington.

“Clearly at some level a decision was made to abandon some of the pillars of the U.S. policy toward Venezuela these past few years,” said Brian Winter, vice president of the Council of the Americas. “But until we know precisely what the Biden administration is trying to achieve, it’ll be difficult to evaluate how far this détente can go.”

U.S. officials have not detailed any other specific outcomes of the talks, which were led by Juan González, who is responsible for Latin America on the National Security Council. It was the first Venezuela visit by a White House official since Hugo Chávez led the country in the late 1990s, and a rare opportunity to discuss policy issues with the Maduro government.

One official described it as “a constructive, diplomatic but very candid dialogue” that did not entail any quid pro quo but allowed the Biden administration to share its “view of the world” with Maduro.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that it was an encouraging sign that Maduro decided to return to negotiations in Mexico with his opponents.

But neither she nor anyone else in the administration would say how the U.S. would reciprocate, if at all.

“There are a range of issues moving forward, but right now we’re just celebrating the return of two Americans,” Psaki said.

But some American lawmakers are hopeful that direct talks with Maduro can produce meaningful changes. Rep. Gregory Meeks, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, applauded Biden’s efforts and said he should next suspend oil sanctions to provide support for negotiations without letting up pressure on human rights abusers and corrupt officials.

“The Trump-era oil sanctions currently in place have only deepened the suffering of the Venezuelan people and failed to weaken Maduro’s control of the country,” Meeks said in a statement Wednesday.

One of the Americans released, oil executive Gustavo Cardenas, had been imprisoned in Venezuela since 2017, when he and several colleagues at Houston-based Citgo were lured to Caracas for what they thought was a meeting with their parent company, state run oil giant PDVSA.

Instead, masked security officers bearing assault rifles burst into a conference room and arrested the men. Later they were sentenced on corruption charges stemming from a never-executed plan to refinance some $4 billion in Citgo bonds by offering a 50% stake in the company as collateral.

Cardenas, in a statement Wednesday, said his imprisonment of more than four years “has caused a lot of suffering and pain, much more than I can explain with my words.”

The eight Americans who remain imprisoned in Venezuela, including five of Cardenas’ colleagues from Citgo, are an important obstacle to normal relations with Maduro.

But even if a release of the remaining prisoners seems remote, Winter says there is a small window now to keep momentum building, as the U.S. gears up for a long geopolitical standoff with Russia.

Among the options available to the U.S. is allowing Chevron — the last remaining American oil company in Venezuela — to boost production and possibly resume oil exports to Gulf Coast refineries tailor made to process the country’s tar-like crude, a U.S. official said prior to the weekend’s shuttle diplomacy. Under U.S. sanctions, Chevron is banned from negotiating with Maduro and doing all but basic upkeep on wells it operates in connection with PDVSA.

There has also been speculation the U.S. could seek to reopen its embassy in Caracas, which has been shuttered since the Trump administration and other governments in 2019 recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

Much depends on how much Maduro sets aside his authoritarian impulses.

Even as he hosts top U.S. officials, Maduro has shown little sign he is willing to abandon Russian President Vladimir Putin. He spoke by phone with the Russian leader last week in a show of support and attended a rally in Caracas where Putin’s ambassador received a roaring ovation from ruling socialist party stalwarts.

Winter said Maduro will also have to show a real willingness to negotiate in earnest with his opponents and not use the talks as he has in the past as a delaying tactic to ease international pressure.

Opposition hardliners, as well as their allies in the U.S. Congress, have started to chastise Biden for abandoning a multilateral policy of isolating Maduro.

Wherever the outreach ends up, some Venezuelan government insiders are already giddy over the prospects of a better future if not the return to the days when they could buy up real estate in the U.S. and spend weekends in Miami.

“It’s the beginning of the end of the conflict,” quipped one wealthy Venezuelan businessman who has been a longtime target of U.S. federal investigators. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive bilateral issues. “Now you’ll have to write about Russia and the oligarchs that the U.S. is going to pursue there.”

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Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman reported this story in Miami and AP writer Regina Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. AP writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

AMERIKA; WHITE SUPREMACIST SOCIETY

SPLC report: Hate groups in decline as views hit mainstream

By AARON MORRISON

March 9, 2022

 White nationalist demonstrators walk into Lee park surrounded by counter demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. In its annual report, released Wednesday, March 9, 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it identified 733 active hate groups in 2021, down from the 838 counted in 2020 and the 940 counted in 2019. Hate groups had risen to a historic high of 1,021 in 2018, said the law center, which tracks racism, xenophobia and far right militias.

(AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

The number of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and anti-government extremist groups across the U.S. fell for a third straight year in 2021, even as some groups were reinvigorated by the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year and by the ongoing culture wars over the pandemic and school curriculums.

In its annual report, released Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it identified 733 active hate groups in 2021, down from the 838 counted in 2020 and the 940 counted in 2019. Hate groups had risen to a historic high of 1,021 in 2018, said the law center, which tracks racism, xenophobia and far right militias.

The number of anti-government groups fell to 488 in 2021, down from 566 in 2020 and 576 in 2019. Such groups peaked at 1,360 in 2012, the year former President Barack Obama was elected to a second term.

“Rather than demonstrating a decline in the power of the far right, the dropping numbers of organized hate and anti-government groups suggest that the extremist ideas that mobilize them now operate more openly in the political mainstream,” says the new report, shared with The Associated Press ahead of its release.

The Montgomery, Alabama-based law center cited several examples including Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, whose discussion of a conspiracy likening immigration from nonwhite countries to a “great replacement” of white Americans last September was welcomed by white nationalists who were linked to the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The law center counted 98 active white nationalist groups in 2021.

The report’s release comes one day after a federal jury convicted a Texas man of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun, in an attempt to obstruct Congress’ joint session to certify the Electoral College vote that cemented President Joe Biden’s victory over former President Donald Trump. Separately on Tuesday, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a longtime leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group, was arrested on a conspiracy charge related to his alleged role in coordinating the Capitol attack.

Active Proud Boys chapters jumped to 72 in 2021, up from 43 in 2020. The rise in chapters was noteworthy considering that more than three dozen members of the group had been charged in relation to their role in the Capitol attack, according to the law center.

“After Jan. 6, in the immediate aftermath, these groups did lay low,” Susan Corke, SPLC’s Intelligence Project director, told the AP. “I had a moment of hope that was quickly extinguished when I didn’t see more mainstream Republicans condemn these groups.”

The extremist ideas expressed by active hate and anti-government groups “are increasingly normalized,” Corke added.

Beyond the Capitol attack, the law center’s report details how several factions of the far right movement have been reinvigorated by political wedge issues. Issues fueling active hate and anti-government extremist groups include the banning of critical race theory and books that discuss LGBTQ identity in public schools, coronavirus vaccine and mask mandates, and immigration.

“This movement is working feverishly to undermine democracy, but what’s more startling is that they are also coalescing around a willingness to engage in violence,” Corke said.

Slowing any push toward authoritarianism, according to the SPLC, requires elected leaders to universally embrace democratic institutions, while also protecting the right to vote for communities of color and other marginalized people. The law center has also called for better funding of prevention programs that interrupt the radicalization of young people by hate and anti-government groups.

The SPLC is a liberal advocacy organization that, in addition to monitoring hate groups, files lawsuits over justice issues and offers educational programs to counter prejudice. Frequently criticized by conservative groups as biased, the nonprofit group has faced lawsuits in the past over its designation of various organizations as hate groups.

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Aaron Morrison, who reported from New York, is a national writer on AP’s Race & Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

A look inside the 1st official ‘safe injection sites’ in US
By JENNIFER PELTZ

March 9, 2022

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Brian Hackel, right, an overdose prevention specialist, helps Steven Baez, a client suffering addiction, find a vein to inject intravenous drugs at an overdose prevention center, at OnPoint NYC in New York, N.Y., Friday, Feb. 18, 2022. Also known as a safe injection site, the privately run center is equipped and staffed to reverse overdoses, a bold and controversial contested response to confront opioid overdose deaths nationwide. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)


NEW YORK (AP) — Jose Collado settled in at a clean white table in a sunlit room, sang a few bars and injected himself with heroin.

After years of shooting up on streets and rooftops, he was in one of the first two facilities in the country where local officials are allowing illegal drug use in order to make it less deadly.

Equipped and staffed to reverse overdoses, New York City’s new, privately run “overdose prevention centers” are a bold and contested response to a storm tide of opioid overdose deaths nationwide.

Supporters say the sites — also known as safe injection sites or supervised consumption spaces — are humane, realistic responses to the deadliest drug crisis in U.S. history. Critics see them as illegal and defeatist answers to the harm that drugs wreak on users and communities.

To Collado, 53, the room he uses regularly is simply “a blessing.”

“They always worry about you, and they’re always taking care of you,” he says.

“They make sure that you don’t die,” adds his friend Steve Baez. At 45, he’s come close a couple of times.

In their first three months, the sites in upper Manhattan’s East Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods halted more than 150 overdoses during about 9,500 visits — many of them repeat visits from some 800 people in all. The sites are planning to expand to round-the-clock service later this year.

“It’s a loving environment where people can use safely and stay alive,” says Sam Rivera, the executive director of OnPoint NYC, a nonprofit that runs the centers. “We’re showing up for people who too many people view as disposable.”

Supervised drug-consumption sites go back decades in Europe, Australia and Canada. Several U.S. cities and the state of Rhode Island have approved the concept, but no authorized sites were actually operating until New York’s opened in November (researchers have documented an underground site in an undisclosed U.S. location for several years). New York’s announcement came six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that a planned Philadelphia site was illegal under a 1986 federal law against running a venue for illicit drug use.

Despite winning the Philadelphia case, the U.S. Justice Department indicated last month it might stop fighting such sites, saying it was evaluating them and discussing “appropriate guardrails.”

New York City’s only Republican in Congress, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, has pressed the Justice Department to shutter what see sees as “heroin shooting galleries that only encourage drug use and deteriorate our quality of life.”

She has proposed to strip federal money from any private group, state or local government that “operates or controls” a safe injection site. (Her efforts spurred a protest in lower Manhattan Wednesday by VOCAL-NY, a social service group interested in eventually opening a consumption site.)

Another New Yorker in Congress, Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, is a leading sponsor of an addiction-fighting proposal that could make money available for such facilities. Organizers say the New York sites currently run on private donations, though their parent group gets city and state money for syringe exchange, counseling and many other services offered alongside the consumption rooms.

Several state and city officials have embraced them. But they also fueled a December protest that drew over 100 people, including U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat, to complain that drug programs in general are unfairly concentrated in the injection sites’ neighborhoods and kept out of whiter, wealthier areas.

“The safe consumption site is doing God’s work, but they’re doing it in the wrong place,” says Shawn Hill, who co-founded a neighborhood group called the Greater Harlem Coalition.

People bring their own drugs — of whatever type — to the consumption rooms, but they’re stocked with syringes, alcohol wipes, straws for snorting, other paraphernalia and, crucially, oxygen and the opioid-overdose-reversing drug naloxone.

Staffers, some of whom have used illegal drugs themselves, watch for signals of overconsumption or other needs, from advice on injection technique to more complicated help.

Resting a supportive hand on the shoulder of a slumping, dejected man, Adrian Feliciano encouraged him to talk with a mental health counselor — and brought one in — on a recent afternoon.

“For a lot of our folks, just providing a safe space is an introduction to services,” Feliciano, the center’s clinical and holistic care director, said afterward.

For all the services it offers and the overdoses it has turned around, OnPoint has also come up against its limits. During a 10-day span in February, two regulars died and a third was in a coma for a time after apparent overdoses elsewhere when the sites were closed at night, according to senior program director Kailin See, who believes longer hours would have saved those who died (the third person recovered).

There have been no recorded deaths in supervised injection facilities in countries that permit them, and there’s some evidence linking them to fewer overdose deaths and ambulance calls in their neighborhoods, according to a 2021 report that compiled existing studies.

The report, by the Boston-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, found no link between safe injection sites and the rates of various crimes, though public drug use dropped off in some places.

“If you believe in harm reduction, here’s harm reduction that saves you money” in ambulance runs, said Dr. David Rind, the think tank’s chief medical officer.

But to Jim Crotty, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official during the Obama and Trump administrations, the sites’ lifesaving purpose comes at steep social cost.

“The goal can’t simply be to keep people alive,” said Crotty, who argues that policymakers should concentrate instead on expanding drug treatment. “If you believe, like me, that doing drugs is very destructive, then the goal has to be to stop doing drugs.”

Rivera, for his part, stresses the need to stanch the flow of drugs into the U.S., rather than what he sees as blaming people in poor communities “for using the drugs that were let in.” OnPoint says staffers regularly foster, but don’t force, conversations about treatment, which many clients have already tried.

“You need to be alive to try again,” See says.

Collado has tried to quit drugs, stopping at times during his four decades of using, he said. Like many of people who use the consumption rooms, he lives on the streets.

He and Baez look out for each other. They’ve helped one another solve problems, shared money when one was broke, and tried to make sure that neither would overdose and die alone. The room, and everything offered along with it, fill that last role now, and more.

“This is my home right here,” Collado said. “This is my family.”