Friday, April 01, 2022

Birds may be laying eggs earlier due to Climate change

Roughly a third of bird species around Chicago are laying their eggs earlier, one study found.

By Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech | April 1, 2022

David McNew/Getty Images

Story at a glance

About a third of Chicago-area bird species are laying their eggs earlier than normal, a study recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology found.

Researchers believe the change in nesting is the result of earlier springs caused by climate change.

Birds typically lay their eggs in the spring when food is plentiful but laying their eggs too early could threaten the survival of their young.

Climate change is causing some species of birds to lay their eggs a month earlier than normal.

A study recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology reports that roughly a third of all bird species around the Chicago area are nesting an average of 25 days earlier than usual.

The altered nesting dates are the result of warmer and earlier springs, which is the start of the breeding season for most North American bird species, according to the study.

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“They have evolved to try and mate at a certain period of time because that is when food is most abundant to feed their babies,” said Jeremy Kirchman, curator of birds at the New York State Museum, who was not involved in the study. “Now, they’re nesting earlier because the cues that they are following in order to know when to breed are climate related.”

Researchers, including Kirman, worry that birds laying eggs in “false springs” run the risk of “mismatching” between their lay dates and when there is enough food. Cold snaps that occur in the springtime as a result of climate change also pose a threat to birds as food supplies are likely to perish during a sudden drop in temperature.

Bird populations in the United States are in decline, with the overall population of birds in North America having dropped by 3 billion since the 1970s. And climate change threatens to make the population decrease even more drastic.

“If we don’t do anything about climate change it’s not only that we are going to see these cold snaps, but there are other things that we are going to have to deal with, like heat waves, in the spring that could be detrimental to breeding,” said Brooke Bateman, director of climate science at the Audubon Society.

Researchers made the conclusion after comparing recent nesting dates of 72 species of bird that live in the Upper Midwest to old nest records archived in Chicago’s Field Museum as well as specimens at the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology and the Chicago Academy of Sciences.

The Field Museum has one of the largest egg collections in the world with hollowed out egg relics most of which were collected by lay egg collectors over 100 years ago, when the pastime was more popular.

“These early egg people were incredible natural historians, in order to do what they did. You really have to know the birds in order to go out and find the nests and do the collecting,” said John Bates, curator of birds at the Field Museum and lead author of the study.

“They were very attuned to when the birds were starting to lay, and that leads to, in my opinion, very accurate dates for when the eggs were laid.”

Two egg collections were analyzed for the study, the first included data from 1880 to 1920 and the second from 1990 to 2015.

In order to address the gap in data, one researcher, Mason Fidino, a quantitative ecologist at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, created a model that incorporated the change in nesting time during the gap years and changes to atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperatures.

Apocalyptic price of Ukraine’s victory in Irpin

By AFP
Published April 1, 2022

Irpin used to be a smart commuter town in the pine forests on Kyiv's northwestern edge - Copyright AFP Ishara S. KODIKARA

Danny KEMP

The last survivors in the ruins of Irpin have just one word to describe the Russians who have retreated after one of the pivotal battles of the war in Ukraine.

“Fascists!” rages Bogdan, 58, as he and his friends walk a dog through a deserted town centre that is free of shelling for the first time in a month.

His friends nod in agreement.

“Every 20 to 30 seconds we heard mortar shots. And so all day long. Just destruction,” the tent construction worker told AFP journalists who reached Irpin on Friday.

It used to be a smart commuter town in the pine forests on Kyiv’s northwestern edge.

But Irpin held off the full force of Russia’s invasion, becoming the closest Moscow’s forces got to the centre of the capital some 20 kilometres (12 miles) away.

The town whose once leafy parks were left strewn with bodies is now back under Ukrainian control, as Russian troops hastily pull back from outside Kyiv.

Victory came at a terrible price that has left it looking more like Aleppo or Grozny than an affluent satellite town in Ukraine.

Barely a building has escaped the fighting unscathed. Shelling has blasted huge chunks out of modern, pastel-coloured apartment blocks.

The foggy streets are eerily empty, littered with cars with bullet-scarred windscreens, and echoing with the sound of stray dogs.

“It’s the apocalypse,” says a Ukrainian soldier who hitches a ride across the empty town.

– ‘I love Irpin’ –

Irpin embodied the horrors of war in the early days of the invasion that Russian President Vladimir Putin said he launched to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine.

Images of a family wiped out by a shell as they tried to flee, and of thousands of people sheltering under a destroyed bridge, were seen around the world.

For the past three weeks it has been closed off to the media since the death of a US journalist, with Ukrainian authorities saying it was too dangerous to enter.

Now, near a sign in the town centre that says “I love Irpin” with a red heart, the handful of the town’s residents who stayed tell how they survived more than a month of relentless shelling.

“We hid in the basement. They fired Grad rockets, mortars and tank shells,” says Bogdan, asking to be identified only by his first name.

“My wife and I came under mortar fire twice. But that’s okay, we are alive and well.”

Wandering through a street blocked by a burned-out cement mixer, resident Viktor Kucheruk begs for cigarettes.

“As soon as we hear a shot, we immediately scatter to our burrows,” the 51-year-old says.

“The lamps in the chandeliers.. fell down from the explosions. We sat at home in the corner during the shelling, where the walls are the thickest.”

A new housing development with a large sign saying “Irpin, Rich Town” is pockmarked by shelling, with two apartments totally destroyed.

Playgrounds with abandoned children’s scooters lie covered in rubble.

Rescue workers are still retrieving the dead from Irpin and placing them in body bags, before taking them to the blown-up bridge that links the town with Kyiv.

The bridge is covered with dozens of burned, bullet-ridden and abandoned cars, which rescue workers are now trying to clear.

– Russian tank graveyard –

Ukrainian forces have “liberated” a string of Russian-occupied towns and villages near the capital in recent days after Russia said it would scale back attacks on Kyiv.

Russia’s pullback now appears to be gathering pace, even as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow was consolidating for an assault in the country’s east and south.

AFP journalists counted at least 13 destroyed Russian armoured vehicles around the village of Dmytrivka, five kilometres (three miles) southwest of Irpin.

At least three charred corpses of Russian soldiers could be seen in the burned-out wreckage of a single wiped-out convoy of eight tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

A severed lower leg lay next to one vehicle.

Russian military uniforms and personal belongings lay scattered on the ground, including a red-leather bound Russian translation of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.

Villager Oksana Furman, 47, shows where Moscow’s military might had left a shell hole in her kitchen during the tank battle two days ago.

A Russian tank had also reversed into her garden wall, causing it to collapse.

“There was a crazy rumble, the noise of the vehicles, everything was shaking. And then it was shell after shell,” said Furman, who hid in a neighbour’s basement.

Back in Irpin, where authorities say at least 200 civilians were killed, residents are keeping Ukraine’s success in this battle in perspective.

“We recaptured Irpin, we recaptured a lot of things, but the war is not over,” says Bogdan.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/apocalyptic-price-of-ukraines-victory-in-irpin/article#ixzz7PFq9qNj6

Ramadan 2022: Turkey's Erdogan says Palestinians must enter Israel during holy month

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan also stresses shared energy interests between two Turkey and Israel

Israeli President Isaac Herzog (L) and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan met in Ankara in early March. AFP

Tim Kiek

Apr 01, 2022

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday told his Israeli counterpart Palestinians must be allowed to enter Israel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In a phone call with President Isaac Herzog, President Erdogan also welcomed recent Israeli and Palestinian statements calling for easing tensions.

Tensions have eased in recent months between Turkey and Israel, too, with energy a conciliatory force.

Australia’s Largest Bank to Allow Workers to Discuss Pay: AFR

Georgina Mckay, Bloomberg News

Signage for Commonwealth Bank of Australia is displayed outside a branch in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2019. Commonwealth Bank reported a slight increase in first-half profit as Chief Executive Officer Matt Comyn steadies the ship after the turmoil of a yearlong inquiry into financial industry misconduct. Photographer David Moir/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Australia’s largest bank removed secrecy clauses on salaries in its contracts, just days after a similar move by its rival.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia told employees they would be free to discuss their pay starting April 11 to boost pay equity, though they shouldn’t pressure co-workers to discuss the topic, the Australian Financial Review reported.

“As part of our commitment to identify and address any perceived or actual pay inequity, we have decided to remove the pay confidentiality clauses from new contracts and waive the obligation for confidentiality in all current ones,” the AFR cited a bank spokesman as saying.

The bank added that it has publicly disclosed “gender pay equity outcomes” for the past five years, including the latest figures in its 2021 annual report.

Australian men are twice as likely to be highly paid than women, according to a report from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. While the pay gap narrowed to 22.8% in the year through March 2021, the drop was just half a percentage point, as calls grow louder for stronger visibility and treatment of women in the country’s labor force.

Read more: Men Twice as Likely to Be Well Paid as Women in Australia

The change came after union concerns that managers were disciplining workers for discussing pay, the AFR reported. The bank had rejected the claims, it added.

Smaller rival Westpac Banking Corp. said earlier in the week it will no longer stop employees from openly discussing their salaries as part of an initiative to help narrow the gender pay gap.

Russian Retreat from Chernobyl Opens Door

for IAEA Monitors

Jonathan Tirone, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- International nuclear monitors are preparing to return to the stricken Chernobyl nuclear power plant -- site of the deadly 1986 meltdown -- as soon as Russian troops complete their withdrawal and Ukrainian operators take back control.

International Atomic Energy Agency monitors will be on the ground “very soon,” Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said at a press briefing in Vienna. The Argentine diplomat returned Friday from a week-long trip to Ukraine and Russia, where he worked out separate deals to boost the safety and security of nuclear sites amid a military conflict now in its second month.

“This is undoubtedly a step in the right direction,” Grossi said of the Russia withdrawal from Chernobyl. “The plant has to be operated by its own natural operators.”

In the absence of international oversight, a war of words has erupted between Ukrainian and Russian nuclear-safety officials over radiation risks at Chernobyl. Russians who began leaving the plant got “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches at the highly contaminated site, Ukraine’s state power company said Friday. Moscow’s IAEA envoy reported Thursday that Ukraine workers at the plant sabotaged transmission lines used to monitor radiation safety.

Grossi said that radiation levels around the plant were normal and that the IAEA hasn’t seen any evidence that Russian troops received dangerous doses. Heavy vehicles kicking up dust as they exit could temporarily trigger higher measurements, as they did when Russia troops first arrived in February, he said.

The 2,600 square kilometer (1,000 square mile) Chernobyl exclusion zone contains long-lived radioactive material that will take thousands of years to decay. It also houses a nuclear-waste facility, where spent fuel from Ukraine’s reactors is encased for safe, long-term storage.

Nuclear authorities have been warning for weeks that the relative risks at Chernobyl are low -- compared to the dangers of bullets, bombs and the threats to functioning nuclear power plants -- but that the site of the deadly accident continues to stoke a visceral reaction among people. Russia’s retreat from the site provides new ammunition in the information war that’s run parallel to the armed conflict now in its second month.

“It has been a bit laborious for us to establish facts,” Grossi said. “If our people are there, it goes much faster.”

The more immediate radiation concerns in Ukraine are located at the country’s 15 other reactors which are operating in a war zone. Vadim Chumak, head of the external exposure dosimetry lab at Ukraine’s National Research Center for Radiation Medicine, told MIT Technology Review this week that he’s more concerned by the risk posed by Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southeast of the country.

“In Zaporizhzhia they have six reactors, plus spent fuel storage,” he said. “If there was any damage to the spent fuel assemblies stored at Zaporizhzhia, it could result in an enormous radiological emergency, comparable to what happened in Chernobyl.”

The IAEA’s agreement with Ukraine and Russia includes a “rapid assistance mechanism” that could be triggered in the event of an accident and will allow monitors on site to “assess and assist almost immediately.” The agency will also deliver personal-protection gear, radiation-detection equipment to authorities, Grossi said.

Ukraine crisis: Reports of poisoning among Russians

Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby casts doubt on the reports that Russian

soldiers had suffered radiation sickness

Victoria Kim | Published 02.04.22

As Russian troops pulled out of Ukraine’s shuttered Chernobyl nuclear plant five weeks after seizing it, an international nuclear watchdog agency is looking into reports that some of the soldiers are experiencing radiation poisoning.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, was scheduled to speak at a news conference afternoon at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna after meeting with senior government officials from Ukraine and Russia.

Russian troops left the plant and the nearby city of Slavutych on Thursday, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run energy company. Three convoys of soldiers who left the site were headed north toward Belarus, the IAEA said in a statement.

The agency said it was working to confirm local news media reports that Russian soldiers were leaving the site because some had been exposed to high levels of radiation there.

The agency also said it would send experts and safety and security supplies to Ukraine to ensure safety at Chernobyl, where the worst nuclear disaster in history occurred in 1986.

A Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, cast doubt on the reports that Russian soliders had suffered radiation sickness, saying in a news conference on Thursday that “at this early stage” the troop movement appeared to be “a piece of this larger effort to refit and resupply and not necessarily done because of health hazards or some sort of emergency or a crisis at Chernobyl”.

Russia seized the decommissioned plant early in its invasion of Ukraine, raisingconcerns about radiation levels and safeguarding at the site, where spent fuel still requires round-the-clock maintenance.

Some Russian troops were still in the “exclusion zone” around the Chernobyl nuclear power station on Friday morning, a day after ending their occupation of the plant itself, a Ukrainian official said.

(New York Times News Service)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL

New York state enacts token safe staffing requirement for nursing homes

Erik Schreiber
WSWS.ORG

A long-delayed measure intended to increase staffing at nursing homes in New York state took effect on April 1. It requires facilities to have enough employees to spend a specified minimum amount of time per day with each resident.

The reform was passed as a part of the state budget last year and had been scheduled to take effect on January 1. Governor Kathy Hochul repeatedly delayed its implementation, however, citing the ongoing pandemic and the shortage of health care workers as excuses. Her ultimate change of mind may appear to be a victory for nursing home workers, but the reform will do little to improve their working conditions. Nor will it improve care for the state’s elderly and vulnerable patients.

Understaffing has long hobbled New York’s nursing homes. It is a deliberate policy that companies pursue to reduce their payroll costs and increase their profits. The companies use inadequate staffing as an excuse to pressure nurses to work double and even triple shifts to compensate. As a result, nurses are not able to provide adequate care to their patients.

May Nast arrives for dinner at RiverWalk, an independent senior housing facility, in New York, April 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

The twin stresses of inadequate staffing and overburdened health care workers have reduced patients’ quality of life and resulted in preventable deaths. The coronavirus-related mortality among residents of New York’s nursing homes became a national scandal in 2020, and the magnitude of the negligence recently became clearer. In March, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an audit that found that the administration of Governor Andrew Cuomo had undercounted the number of pandemic-related deaths by at least 4,100.

The pandemic only exacerbated the already harmful consequences of understaffing at nursing homes. More than two-thirds of the state’s 401 for-profit facilities have the lowest possible staffing ratings given by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), according to a 2021 report by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The report found that nursing homes with low CMS staffing ratings at the start of the pandemic had higher COVID-19 fatality rates. This finding likely results at least partly from the fact that administrators pressured sick employees to report to work—and even to work multiple consecutive shifts—instead of quarantining themselves.

Furthermore, the report found that New York’s reimbursement model for nursing homes gives owners of for-profit facilities an incentive to transfer facility funds to owners and investors, instead of investing in additional staffing to care for residents.

Instead of waging a genuine fight against dangerous understaffing, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) has held a series of rallies, the primary purpose of which has been to allow nurses to let off steam. The union has coupled this tactic with appeals to Democratic politicians for reforms. But the Democratic Party is no less beholden to the health care industry and its Wall Street shareholders than the Republican Party is, and any reforms that it is pressured to enact are purely cosmetic.

The measures included in New York’s current budget are no exception. The Safe Staffing Act, which has just gone into effect, requires nursing homes to employ enough workers to give each resident 3.5 hours of direct care every day. This amount of time must include no less than 2.2 hours of care provided by certified nurse assistants and 1.1 hours for licensed practical nurses or registered nurses.

When the bill was passed last year, some advocates for nursing home residents criticized this requirement as inadequate. They pointed out that the law would allow nursing homes to use support staff, rather than registered nurses, to provide a portion of patient care hours.

In addition to the Safe Staffing Act, the budget requires nursing homes to spend at least 70 percent of their revenue on direct resident care. Moreover, it requires these facilities to dedicate at least 40 percent of revenue to resident-facing staffing, and this expenditure is included as part of the expenditure on resident care. Finally, the bill caps nursing home profits at 5 percent. These provisions also took effect on April 1.

New York is not the first state to require that health care facilities maintain a certain level of staffing. California has taken the most direct approach by limiting the number of patients that can be assigned to a nurse, depending on the unit in which he or she works. Under state law, a nurse in an operating room, for example, can be assigned no more than one patient, and a medical/surgical nurse no more than five.

But again and again, hospitals have found ways to avoid complying with this law. During the winter surge of the pandemic in December 2020, the state granted emergency waivers that allowed hospitals to exceed the maximum allowed numbers of patients assigned to nurses. These waivers placed unreasonable burdens on nurses and jeopardized patients’ safety. Although the waivers expired in February 2021, hospitals can still apply for them.

These standards were still being violated in August 2021. A hospital in Eureka, California, was triaging patients in the waiting room as though a mass casualty event were taking place, according to trauma nurse, Matt Miele. “To me, it seems like the lowest staffing levels that I’ve seen at the time we need it the most,” he told CalMatters. He often was assigned more than four patients, which exceeded the ratio mandated by the state.

To meet the new staffing standards, New York will have to hire 12,000 workers statewide, according to Sallie Williams, vice president of advancement at Heritage Ministries, a not-for-profit health care organization for the elderly, who spoke to Erie News Now. The staffing shortage is so severe that National Guard troops were deployed in December 2021 to assist New York nursing homes, and these troops will remain in place for at least 30 more days.

Throughout the pandemic, the number of nurses who have retired has increased sharply. In addition, many nurses have burned out and quit because of overwork, inadequate support and inhuman levels of stress. In short, the failure of the ruling class to prepare for and respond to the pandemic in a rational way has contributed to the acute staffing shortage that the state now faces.

Nurses will not be able to gain safe staffing ratios, better pay, reasonable workloads or protection against the pandemic if they remain confined within the trade unions and direct their appeals to the capitalist state. Winning these demands will require nurses to form rank-and-file committees that are independent of the trade unions. The ultimate aim of these committees must be to confront the profit system itself, which is the root of the crisis in the health care system.

Ethiopia says aid is on way to Tigray, rebels say no aid in sight

Tigray people of northern Ethiopia have been suffering due to lack of humanitarian aid access for months

Addis Getachew and Andrew Wasike |01.04.2022

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia / NAIROBI, Kenya

The Ethiopian government on Friday said that some 21 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid are on their way to Tigray, the northernmost regional state affected by 16 months of armed conflict.

Ethiopia said that the consignment has been made available by the UN’s World Food Program, according to local broadcaster FANA.

On March 24, the Ethiopian government announced a humanitarian truce in its war against the Tigray rebels to facilitate the free flow of emergency humanitarian aid into the region.

The government also said it would allow for the scaling up of humanitarian flights to Tigray from two a week to daily.

Tigray rebels say government still blocking aid

The Tigray rebels who are in charge of the northern area have denied the announcement by the government that it would allow the flow of international aid to them.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) claimed via its external office: "We are now in a fifth day since the 'truce' and no single aid truck came to Tigray. It is clear by each day that the deception is coordinated by the Addis regime. The world was quick to welcome the 'truce' but is now silent while there is huge troop buildup instead of aid."

The Tigray rebels and the government have been embroiled in an armed conflict since November 2020.

The TPLF have accused the Ethiopian government of foot-dragging in implementing the humanitarian truce it announced on March 24.

"… the Government of Tigray demands the provision of sufficient humanitarian assistance without any delay, and an end to the mendacious claims regarding the delivery of humanitarian aid into Tigray," read a statement released by the Tigray External Affairs Office.

The UN said the Tigray region "stands on the edge of a humanitarian disaster" with more than 40% of the region’s estimated 6 million people requiring emergency assistance due to the war.

The conflict spilled over to neighboring Amhara and Afar regional states, displacing hundreds of thousands and forcing 5 million people to depend on aid, according to aid groups' reports.

Thousands, mostly civilians, have been killed in the armed conflict, with the UN blaming both sides for the deaths.

U.S. investigators find evidence Russian oligarchs trying to evade sanctions -official

Author of the article:
Luc Cohen and Sarah N. Lynch
Publishing date:Apr 01, 2022 •

NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors have found evidence that Russian oligarchs are trying to evade sanctions put in place to pressure Moscow to stop its invasion of Ukraine, the head of a new Justice Department task force said on Friday.

Andrew Adams, a veteran prosecutor tapped to lead the “KleptoCapture” task force established last month, told Reuters in an interview that in some cases, even oligarchs who have not yet had sanctions imposed on them are trying to move assets ahead of potential future sanctions.

But even as they try to hide yachts, planes or other mobile property in countries they believe to be secretive, Adams warned that oligarchs trying to evade sanctions are facing an “all-time high” level of international cooperation to track the ill-gotten gains of Russian elites.

“There are efforts afoot – some of them publicly reported – to move, for example, moveable property in the forms of yachts, airplanes … into jurisdictions where, I think, people have the perception that it would be more difficult to investigate and more difficult to freeze,” Adams said.

The task force’s goal is to put the finances of Russian oligarchs under strain in a bid to pressure President Vladimir Putin to cease his weeks-long assault on Ukraine.

The unit’s name is a play on the word “kleptocracy,” which refers to corrupted officials who misuse power to accumulate wealth. The task force includes prosecutors, investigators and analysts from multiple federal agencies.

The United States and its allies have imposed several rounds of sanctions targeting Putin, many of his wealthy friends and dozens of Russian businesses and government agencies.

‘SHARED SENSE OF PURPOSE’

Tracing oligarchs’ assets is often difficult because they are hidden behind “layers of shell companies scattered around the globe,” Adams said.

U.S. prosecutors are receiving information from places previously thought to be safe havens, Adams said.

“Especially in the current context, and the current climate … the level of shared sense of purpose I think is at an all-time-high,” Adams said.

He declined to provide details of specific jurisdictions that have provided the task force with information, or to name specific people under investigation.

He said targeting assets located overseas was a major component of the unit’s work, adding that the United States has not been an attractive country for supporters of Putin’s government since around 2014 due to a series of sanctions over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

European countries have already found and detained the yachts of wealthy Russian businessmen.

Spain’s government temporarily seized the $140 million Superyacht Valerie, which has been linked to Sergei Chemezov, a former KGB officer who heads state conglomerate Rostec.

France last month detained a vessel belonging to Rosneft boss Igor Sechin, while Italy sequestered a yacht owned by Russian billionaire Andrew Igorevich Melnichenko.

The Justice Department said last month that information provided by U.S. law enforcement to foreign partners had contributed to multiple vessel seizures.

“The United States has not been a friendly place to be parking your money as an oligarch,” Adams said. “The most ostentatious, the most obvious sorts of assets are not in the United States.”

Adams cited a 2019 case in which U.S. authorities seized the Wise Honest, a North Korean cargo ship accused of making illicit coal shipments in violation of U.S. sanctions even though the vessel was initially located outside American waters, as a “playbook” for some of the task force’s future cases.

LONG LEGAL FIGHTS AHEAD

Adams said that criminal charges and asset seizure warrants could come in the “early days” of the unit, which was also prepared for lengthy legal battles by oligarchs seeking to prevent the United States from permanently confiscating their assets through civil forfeiture.

Those cases can allow the department to take ill-gotten property in cases where people are outside the country and cannot be extradited. Criminal forfeitures, meanwhile, can accompany an indictment against the property owner.

“We should anticipate that extremely well-heeled litigants will take things to court. We will be engaged in litigation that will take awhile,” Adams said.

The task force may also target banks, cryptocurrency exchanges or other financial institutions who help sanctions violators by turning a blind eye towards suspicious transactions.

Adams said many institutions had voluntarily provided information. “The cooperation from the private sector has been already frequent.” (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)