CANADA

‘We are absolutely destroyed’: Health workers facing burnout, even as COVID levels ease

Dr. Laura Hawryluck was seized with a sense of overwhelming panic so great she couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep.

© Submitted photo.Dr. Laura Hawryluck at Toronto Western Hospital, where she has spent the last two-and-a-half years treating waves of COVID-19 cases.

Teresa Wright - GLOBAL NEWS


This time, the cause wasn’t the faces of the many patients she has witnessed take their last laboured breaths in the intensive care unit at Toronto Western Hospital, where she has spent the last two-and-a-half years treating waves of COVID-19 cases. This time, it was a deadline keeping her awake.

She had been asked by a colleague to edit some teaching materials. A routine task for her any other time. But suddenly, she began to realize the toll the pandemic’s grinding workload has taken on her.

“That sense of overwhelming anxiety of being asked to do one more thing was the near sense of panic that I've never felt before,” she said.

Read more:
Health workers call for radical changes to health care to treat pandemic burnout

This episode made Hawryluck realize she would have to step back from some of her commitments. It wasn’t an easy decision, but the burnout she was feeling was just too much.

“I had to give up on some projects that I love doing,” she said. “But, you know, if I didn't, I realized that I was not going to be able to get through this.”

Life may be back to normal for many Canadians now that COVID-19 cases are on the decline, but the same is not true for many health care workers who are still dealing with hospital outbreaks and COVID-19 patients.

Now, after two years of extreme pandemic workloads, doctors and nurses say they are experiencing more burnout and emotional exhaustion than ever before – and it’s leading some, like Hawryluck, to re-think their commitments and career options.

Dr. Darren Markland, an Edmonton physician who also works in the ICU, recently made the difficult decision to close his practice as a kidney specialist after experiencing what he calls a “crisis situation.”

One day, he published a tweet saying he had just finished working 36 hours straight managing a dialysis shift while also covering the ICU for critical care.

“I was proud of that. That was just me with absolutely no insight. And when you lose your insight as a physician, you become a dangerous one.”

Markland says he ended up making a few “profound” mistakes, which made him realize he couldn’t continue working at that pace.

Read more:
Doctor closes specialty clinic in year 3 of pandemic to focus on critical care: ‘I had to make a choice’

Physician burnout has never been higher in Canada, according to the Canadian Medical Association (CMA).

More than half of physicians report high levels of burnout—nearly double pre-pandemic levels and nearly half say they are likely to reduce clinical hours in the next 24 months, CMA president Dr. Katharine Smart told a federal committee studying Canada’s health workforce in February.

Even though the rate of COVID-19 case numbers have started to ease in hospitals across the country, the workload and stress facing health-care workers hasn’t abated. Because even though there are fewer patients, the ones who do need care are sicker, after two years of being unable or fearful to seek medical care for non-COVID ailments.

This is now coupled with another challenging reality in many hospitals, clinics and family practices: many health-care workers are leaving the profession entirely, due to burnout and exhaustion, according to the CMA.

That means there are more critically-ill patients who need more care but fewer people to care for them.

Video: Peterborough health officials say workplace burnout is becoming more common

“We are absolutely destroyed,” Markland said.

“We are literally seeing people with chronic illnesses who have not seen a primary caregiver for years and now are presenting with end-stage, third-world type manifestations of diabetes or high blood pressure or renal failure. We're seeing young people having strokes because of a combination of unmanaged stress and substance abuse.”

Read more:
‘A pandemic of its own’: How COVID-19 is impacting mental health

It’s a crisis that has hit the health-care system so rapidly, Markland believes many are unprepared to deal with it.

“You combine that with just the mental and emotional stress of being worked to the literal bone, and it generates an environment that's tricky – I’ll say tricky because I often try not to think too hard about what's going on in the hospital.”

Nurses across Canada are also experiencing burnout to such an extreme degree they are at a “breaking point,” Canadian Nurses Association CEO Tim Guest told the same federal standing committee last month.

“This is an urgent national issue,” he said.

He also noted that many hospitals and primary health centres are experiencing an exodus of nurses leaving their jobs for other, higher-paying positions in other provinces or leaving the profession entirely because of unsustainable working conditions.

A report from Statistics Canada released Friday found one in four nurses surveyed between September to November 2021 said they intended to leave their job or change jobs in the next three years. Over 70 per cent of nurses who plan to leave cited job stress or burnout as a major factor, the study found.

Read more:

Hospitals grapple with ‘historical’ staff absences, burnout amid 6th COVID wave

Rachel Muir, a front-line nurse in Ottawa and bargaining unit president for the Ontario Nurses Association, says burnout “doesn’t even begin to describe” how she and her colleagues have been feeling.

“We were burned out before this all started because we were short-staffed. We were making do. And then the extra stressors and expectations, the disrespect we've been shown, have all compounded.”

Muir says she’s heard from nurses who have told her they sit in their cars before going into work, chanting, “You can do this, it’s only 12 hours, you just have to get out of the car.”

She echoed the concerns of physicians about patients who are sicker and needed more arduous care.

“For the nurses and the health-care providers on the front line, the care that they're providing is not only more intense and more acute and more mentally difficult because these patients are more critical – there are more of these patients,” Muir said.

Video: Pandemic health-care burnout not deterring nursing students

Nurses who may have had to care for four-to-six patients two years ago are now caring for six to 10, she said.

“When somebody is critically ill, that's a big number. And when it's not just one of your patients who is critically ill, it's two or three of them, and you are supposed to provide the care that you are trained and want to give – not only is it causing (nurses) to be burnt out, it's a moral injury to us.”

National associations that represent doctors and nurses have called on federal and provincial governments to take immediate, medium and long-term steps to address critical gaps in the health sector across Canada, and have submitted their ideas about what needs to be done. These include calls for more investments in recruitment and retention, training and education and for an expansion of support for community health care so more Canadians have access to family physicians and other primary care providers.

Read more:

Rate of doctor burnout in Canada has doubled since before pandemic: survey

But burnout levels among health workers should also remain a top priority for governments and health agencies to address, says David Gratzer, an attending psychiatrist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

Many health professionals don’t like to admit when they’re feeling overwhelmed or unable to cope because they prioritize their patients’ needs, Grazter said, whose patients include doctors and nurses.

“Over time, this could have consequences … people being less available to listen to patients; more mistakes have been found in some studies.”

Solutions like more flexible work hours, offering better quality work and career options and ensuring health workers are getting adequate vacation time are areas that should also be explored, he added.

“The most important thing is for us to remember burnout is something that's going on that we need to address it. And certainly at the hospital level, on the clinic level, making resources available to people who feel burnt out to get care is extraordinarily important,” Grazter said.

“We need a vibrant and healthy workforce because otherwise we’ll all pay the price.”

IMPERIALISM THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALI$M 

In Latin America, China steps in where US has stepped out



Howard LaFranchi
Fri, June 3, 2022


To a large extent, China’s rise to economic dominance and deepening political influence in Latin America has been a quiet affair.

Even the United States – first preoccupied with wars in the Middle East and then turning inward to the tune of “America First” – seemed to hardly notice over the past two decades as its chief economic competitor and geopolitical rival dethroned Uncle Sam as top trading partner and go-to investor in much of his own backyard. At least until recently.

But for Miriam Arce Pinta, China’s arrival in her picturesque fishing village on Peru’s Pacific coast has been anything but tranquil.

More like a bang.

“The frequent construction blasts rattle our houses, leave cracks in the walls, and put everyone on edge,” says Ms. Arce, a lifelong Chancay resident and artist who has become the face of local opposition to China’s local megaport project.

When completed, the mammoth installation will transform the quaint fishing harbor and resort town, with its key resting spot for migrating bird species, into a bustling beachhead. It will become a hub for exporting the region’s prized raw materials and food back to China and importing Chinese products into South America.

It will certainly change the view from Ms. Arce’s hillside home, which might have inspired Monet or Matisse: Close-knit houses on slopes cascade down to a beach where an armada of pastel-hued skiffs jostles for space with food carts shaded by umbrellas. Two old piers with whitewashed railings carry tourists out over the placid bay, while amateur anglers cast lines into the surf.

The adjacent commercial fishing pier is mostly quiet, many of the local boat captains having accepted buyouts from the port builders or cash incentives to move elsewhere. Already, construction has put extensive tracts of the sea off-limits to Chancay’s fishing fleets.

“As if the explosions at all hours weren’t enough, the big trucks transporting earth to the new roads and beachfront they are constructing operate around the clock in day and night shifts,” Ms. Arce says. “It’s constant noise, and the trucks leave an inescapable dust in what before was refreshing sea air.”

She and the band of unhappy residents, environmentalists, and local merchants she has galvanized to oppose the megaport have become a minor nuisance to Cosco Shipping, the Chinese state-owned company behind the project.

But even Ms. Arce acknowledges that the prospects for halting the operation are dim. The Peruvian government is keen to see the megaport completed, and such trade infrastructure is considered crucial to Beijing.

“The Chancay port is a prime example of how China seeks to secure, from end to end, the supply chains that underpin its economic growth and its aspirations to upgrade its economy,” says Margaret Myers, director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

At the same time, if China is hearing any cries from Latin America, it’s much more the entreaties of governments and companies from São Paulo to Panama City that all want the Asian colossus to come in: They’re eager to have Beijing assist the region in modernizing its infrastructure and diversifying its economy.

And just as it has done in Africa and Central and Southeast Asia, China has been eager to fill a void left in Latin America by the hemisphere’s declining and distracted superpower to the north.

In a matter of a few years, China has supplanted the U.S. as the top trading partner for all of South America except Colombia, Ecuador, and Paraguay – and trends suggest those countries could soon follow. A similar pattern is emerging in Central America and the Caribbean, except for Mexico.

Twenty countries have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, underscoring China’s rising challenge to the U.S. as Latin America’s No. 1 source of foreign investment. And in recent months, one new president after the other has taken office pledging to prioritize economic and even political relations with China – sometimes as a pointed rebuff to the U.S.

In February Argentine President Alberto Fernández raised eyebrows in Washington when he was one of the few world leaders – along with Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso – to travel to Beijing for the Olympic Games.

Mr. Fernández used the occasion to sign up Argentina for the Belt and Road Initiative and to deepen China’s involvement in Argentina’s electrical power industry – including nuclear plants. Accords were penned strengthening Argentina’s place as an exporter of food products, from soybeans to beef, to China.

Beijing is also zeroing in on South America’s reserves of rare earth and other minerals required for high-tech industries – including the “white gold” of the future, lithium. China is increasingly active in the “Lithium Triangle” made up of Argentina, Bolivia, and above all, Chile.

All of this economic activity has inevitably led to closer political and even security ties, with China enticing Latin America’s growing number of leftist-led governments with talk of mutually beneficial “south-south relations.”

One result: A region that was once one of the world’s friendliest toward Taiwan has shifted toward Beijing. Several countries have recently decided to recognize the People’s Republic of China, instead of Taiwan, as Ecuador did in December.

For some experts on Latin America, it is no coincidence that the Biden administration has invited the hemisphere’s democracies to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles June 6-10 – only the second time the U.S. is hosting the event since the inaugural summit in Miami in 1994.

But if Washington has any thoughts of using the gathering to slow China’s rise in the region, some Latin America specialists have a message: Don’t bother. It’s too late.

“Many countries – including Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay – now export more to China than to the U.S. and the European Union combined, while economic relations in many cases have matured beyond natural resource exports to infrastructure development and other investment,” says Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador to Beijing who is now a research professor specializing in the international politics of the Global South at Boston University. “These are countries that need the trade. They need modern infrastructure. They don’t see the U.S. very active in these roles, so they’re not about to push the Chinese back.”

Across Chile’s Atacama Desert, where vast salt flats hug the base of the Andes Mountains, checkerboards of electric yellow, aquamarine, and lizard green salt ponds garishly announce the presence of Chile’s lithium mining operations.

Surrounded by a vast moonscape that at first seems lifeless – the sudden movement of a pair of guanacos off in the salt flats suggests otherwise – the lakes offer an astounding scene: It could be a science fiction setting of futuristic farms on some distant planet producing psychedelic-hued liquid nutrition for humans back on Earth.

Yet while Chile’s lithium ponds may indeed be about future energy sources, their origins are in distant geological epochs. Countless millennia of Andes erosion have left vast deposits of lithium in the soupy brines deep below the salt flats. The viscous matter is pumped up and spread across the ponds to evaporate in the intense desert sun. This concentrates the salts that contain potassium for producing fertilizers – and lithium.

There are no phalanxes of headlamp-clad miners at these operations. Instead, workers in protective gear tend the ponds and gauge the brines for the right concentration of elements. When a worker launches a rowboat out into a lemon-colored lake to take depth measurements, the scene is reminiscent of the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: The only things missing are tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

The workers process the salts and extract the lithium for export – mostly to China and South Korea, where it is an essential component in the batteries that power everything from cellphones to electric cars. Chile is the world’s second-largest exporter of lithium after Australia, and its deposits make it a prime investment target for China.

In 2018, the Chinese company Tianqi bought a 24% stake in the Santiago-based SQM mining and fertilizer corporation, Chile’s second-largest producer of lithium after the American company Albemarle. In January, the Chinese electric vehicle company BYD won a contract to produce 80,000 metric tons of lithium over 20 years, despite the objections of then-President-elect Gabriel Boric.

The socialist Mr. Boric, who took office in April, had called on the outgoing conservative government to suspend awarding new lithium and other mining contracts to allow his government to develop new resource extraction policies. Mr. Boric wants to promote more domestic uses of the country’s mineral wealth – something past governments have attempted, with little success.

Yet despite cries of “China, hands off our lithium!” from leftist voices in Santiago and some Indigenous groups in Atacama, China’s growing role in Chile’s industry seems to raise few alarms.

“I haven’t seen any pressure from our Chinese investors to lower our standards or change our focus on sustainability, but it’s negligible the influence Tianqi could have in that way even if they wanted to,” says Alejandro Bucher, vice president for community relations at SQM’s Atacama operations.

SQM was hampered in the past with a less-than-stellar reputation for maintaining environmental standards and working with local communities, Mr. Bucher acknowledges. But he says the company has done a turnabout in recent years, now implementing environmental standards above those required by the Chilean government and working closely with local Indigenous communities on water, housing, and employment issues.

“Our Chinese investors came in after we set our new course, so it seems they are on board with the shift to sustainability and transparency,” he says.

For many countries, the common description of the region’s big new player is that of an economic giant pursuing its own interests, a partner that is more pragmatic than ideological. They depict China as less interventionist in national affairs than the U.S. was when it dominated the region.

“The idea we are hearing more now – that China poses more risks to us than other big powers – is not convincing to me,” says Andrés Rebolledo, a Chilean trade diplomat who helped negotiate free trade accords with both the U.S. and China. “My perspective is that as such a small part of the global economy, a country like Chile has to trade with everyone while understanding that the big economic powers are all going to defend their interests and act like the bigger partner.”

“My advice for Chile and Latin America is the same,” Ambassador Rebolledo says. “Be the sweethearts of everybody, but married to no one.”

Still, as China’s influence grows, that harmless portrait is being challenged.

A recent “China in the World” study released by Chile’s Instituto Desafíos de la Democracia and the Taiwan-based Doublethink Lab finds that China is becoming more assertive in regional affairs. Moreover, the report places Chile among the world’s top 15 countries most influenced by China – not just economically but also politically.

A debate is brewing in academic and diplomatic circles about Beijing’s deepening footprint, too. “What I’m seeing are two groups that interpret the growing influence of China from two different and increasingly distinct perspectives: one group that says China’s only interest is our natural resources and not our development, and which is growing more suspicious and distrustful of China; and another group that responds to China’s rising influence with a ‘So what?’ and says if we want value-added economies, that’s our job and not China’s responsibility,” says Dorotea López Giral, director of the University of Chile’s Institute of International Studies.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Dr. López says, the first group is more attached to the U.S., is more likely to invoke values of democracy and free markets and human rights in discussions of China, and is more often from the old guard of Chilean academia and diplomacy. The second group, she says, is more pragmatic, prefers a foreign policy “autonomous” from any great power, and is generally younger.

And she believes the second group is prevailing. “It used to be that the young rising academics all sought scholarships to the U.S., but we don’t even have a U.S. studies center anymore. We had to close it,” says Dr. López, noting that a China studies program was established two years ago.

“Now the Chinese are offering 20,000 scholarships ... and everyone wants to go to China,” she adds. “For China we are the cool friend, and Chilean students are responding to that.”

When China announced plans to build a series of megafarms for pigs in Argentina’s northern Chaco region, the provincial governor heralded the project. He saw it as an opportunity for an impoverished Chaco to dip into the enticing and growing pool of Chinese investments in Argentina and Latin America.

After all, Argentina had already been supplying China with agricultural goods – soybeans beginning in the 1990s, then beef for a growing middle class, and even wines for diversifying Chinese palates. Shipping pork to China would be no different.

If anything, the pig farms offered even greater promise, officials argued. The operations would bring value-added industries to underdeveloped Chaco in the form of skilled butchering and state-of-the-art packaging, freezing, and transport.

But not everyone shares the governor’s enthusiasm. A coalition of opponents quickly formed among environmentalists, critics of neoliberal economics, and Indigenous groups. Questioning the safety and long-term viability of such intensive farming, critics note that if China is looking to produce pork far from home, it is because of a 2018-19 African swine fever outbreak that forced the country to destroy half of its national pig herd and turn to expensive imports. Critics contend the megafarms risk repeating such public health disasters in Chaco.

Beyond that, opponents say it is no mere coincidence that China chose Chaco – a marginalized region hungry for economic development – for the farms.

“Argentina is in a very deep economic crisis – so already at a national level, any promise of jobs and dollars, they will go with it,” says Enrique Viale, a prominent environmental lawyer in Buenos Aires. “Chaco is even more desperate for investment, with the added advantage for some investors of being outside the national spotlight where it might be easier to try cutting corners on standards.”

Indeed, for some experts, it’s the economic fragility of so many Latin American countries that partially explains China’s growing presence in the region.

“In Argentina, it’s the country’s weakness that leads to China being the increasingly important partner,” says Juan Luis Bour, chief economist at the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research in Buenos Aires. “Argentina needs loans to build dams and roads and other infrastructure, but after decades of financial crises it has no international credit. So it turns to the only lender out there, China, even if it has to accept terms that are substantially in the lender’s interest.”

This imbalance can leave a country like Argentina with little leverage. One example Professor Bour cites is a Chinese satellite-
tracking station built in a remote part of Patagonia under favorable terms to China. Some worry that Beijing could be using the facility for spying and surveillance activities.

“The real problem is the combination of the Chinese state and Chinese companies makes their style very predatory,” says Evan Ellis, Latin America research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “You can benefit from a predatory partner, but you have to be on top of your game, and that’s much harder if you’re the much weaker partner.”

At the Qom Indigenous reserve in Espinillo, a small outpost on the edge of Chaco’s Impenetrable region – a thick, semiarid forest of spiny trees and prickly bushes – most residents have heard the rumors about Chinese investments in their lands. Many don’t like it.

“The worst part is that we started hearing about big pig farms and we saw the picture of the town administrator with visiting Chinese people, but we could never get a straight story,” says Angel Meza, a Qom leader who favors jobs for local youth but is dubious of big projects on Indigenous lands. “We have held assemblies to discuss these rumors about the Chinese coming here, but we have no solid information.”

Outside town, Horacio Garcia sits in the shade on his family’s 120-acre plot and explains why he worries about talk of Chinese investment in the area.

“I never thought too much about the pig farms, but then we heard the Chinese might put in big citrus groves, and that worried me because my neighbors say they would favor that kind of thing,” he says. “It would be hard to stand up to big investors like the Chinese.”

In Resistencia, Chaco’s capital, provincial officials believe concerns over the proposed pig farms have been overblown. They insist opposition to Chinese investment is primarily from local forces who would be against any change.

“We are no longer talking about megafarms, but smaller operations with 600 or 1,000 sows, a very safe and sanitary option,” says Sebastián Bravo, undersecretary for livestock affairs. Noting Chaco has the technical know-how and local feed production to develop the farms and create thousands of jobs, he adds, “The fact it’s the Chinese behind the project makes no difference. It could be Europeans or anyone else, and we would insist on the same high standards to go forward.”

Just outside town at the 370-acre La Felicidad farm, Eduardo Corcia shows off his 250-mother-pig operation. He has a big personality and pivots easily from the micro of the proposed Chaco pig farms to the macro of China’s investment in Latin America.

“[People] talk of local pork producers teaming up with these new farms, but I’m not sure it makes much sense to me,” he says. “I’d be afraid I’d be left with a lot of excess production capacity once the Chinese get their domestic production back on track.”

Despite that, Mr. Corcia says he understands the need for significant foreign investment in infrastructure and value-added enterprises if Chaco, Argentina, and even Latin America are to boost prosperity.

“I like the idea of foreign business partners, why not?” says the doctor-turned-farmer, who is expanding his operation to include on-site butchering and a refrigeration plant. “But would I want to go in with the Chinese? I don’t know; they have their ways that are different.”

Mr. Corcia says he’d be more comfortable working with Americans, and he senses that’s probably true of many Argentines. “The problem we face in Argentina is that the Americans aren’t around, but the Chinese are,” he says.

And as it goes in much of life, he adds, you dance with those who show up at your party.

Former U.S. ambassador points finger in Qatar lobbying probe


U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 16, 2015. Olson, who has signed a plea deal with prosecutors in January, is pushing federal prosecutors explain why he’s facing criminal charges for illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of Qatar while a retired four-star general who worked with him on the effort is not.

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)


ALAN SUDERMAN and JIM MUSTIAN
Fri, June 3, 2022

A former high-ranking U.S. ambassador admitted Friday to illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of Qatar after demanding that prosecutors tell him why a retired four-star general who worked with him on the effort has not also been charged.

The dispute involving two Washington power players has highlighted the often-ambiguous boundaries of foreign lobbying laws as well as what prosecutors say were high-level, behind-the-scenes influence dealings with the wealthy Persian Gulf country.

Richard G. Olson, former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, pleaded guilty Friday in Washington on federal charges that include improperly helping Qatar influence U.S. policy in 2017 -- when a diplomatic crisis erupted between the gas-rich monarchy and its neighbors over the country’s alleged ties to terror groups and other issues.

Olson had recently argued he’s entitled to learn why prosecutors aren’t also bringing charges against someone he says he worked side by side with on Qatar: retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan before being tapped in late 2017 to lead the influential Brookings Institution think tank.

Allen has denied ever working as a Qatari agent and said his efforts on Qatar in 2017 were motivated to prevent a war from breaking out in the Gulf that would put U.S. troops at risk. A statement from his spokesman to The Associated Press on Thursday said Allen has “voluntarily cooperated with the government’s investigation."

Olson’s lawyers said in court papers that since 2020 he has been seeking to get a lighter sentencing recommendation by extensively cooperating with prosecutors “with the express goal” of bringing charges against Allen. Olson’s lawyers said prosecutors “reiterated their belief in the strength of their case against” Allen only to apparently drop their pursuit.

But federal prosecutor Evan Turgeon said at a hearing last week that the government has not “made a prosecutorial decision as to other persons” and disputed how Olson’s attorney characterized past discussions. The Justice Department declined to comment on its internal deliberations on Allen.

Olson’s lawyers had previously pushed prosecutors to provide copies of Allen’s communications with U.S. government officials related to his actions involving Qatar. Friday, Olson’s attorney Mike Hannon said prosecutors had provided the requested information — the contents of which are not public — and his client was now ready to plead guilty.

Recent filings in Olson’s case provide new details about Allen’s role and what actions prosecutors might view as possible crimes. Allen is not named in those filings but identified as “the General” or “Person 3.”

U.S. law prohibits individuals from helping a foreign entity influence U.S. policy without registering with the Justice Department. The law, known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA, was largely unenforced until prosecutors began taking more aggressive action in recent years.

Typically, FARA violations by themselves do not lead to significant prison time but the law’s critics say there are too many unsettled questions about what may constitute a prosecutable offense.

“FARA is an exceptionally broad and vague law that ... sets snares for the unwary, even capturing some of the most sophisticated of Washington players,” David Keating of the Institute for Free Speech said in comments to the Justice Department earlier this year.

Notably, Olson pleaded guilty to a violation of State Department policy regarding working for a foreign government within a year of leaving government service, not a FARA violation.

Olson’s lawyer said in court last week that federal prosecutors made clear that they were pursing a FARA case against Allen.

Olson recruited Allen to join him “in providing aid and advice to Qatari government officials with the intent to influence U.S. foreign policy” shortly after the Gulf diplomatic crisis erupted in June 2017, prosecutors said in court filings.

That crisis sparked a heavy spending war between Qatar and rivals Saudi Arabia and the UAE in a battle to win influence in Washington during much of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Olson was being paid $20,000 a month by Imaad Zuberi, a one-time political donor who is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges and who prosecutors say illegally lobbied for Qatar.

Zuberi also agreed to pay Allen an undisclosed fee for his efforts, prosecutors said in Olson’s plea deal. Allen’s spokesman said the general was never paid.

In mid June 2017, Allen met with Olson and Zuberi at a Washington hotel to explain “how he would conduct the lobbying and public relations campaign,” prosecutors said.

A few days later, Olson and Allen flew to Qatar -- at Zuberi’s expense -- to meet with the Qatari’s ruling emir and other government officials, where the pair explained that they were not representing the U.S. government but “noted that they had the connections with U.S. government officials that placed them in a position to help Qatar,” prosecutors wrote.

Allen advised the Qataris on what steps to take, including signing a pending deal to purchase F-15 fighter jets and using e a major U.S. military base in Qatar “as leverage to exert influence over U.S. government officials,” prosecutors wrote.

Qatar signed a deal to purchase the jets four days after that meeting.

After returning to the U.S., Allen sought the help of then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and his staff to support Qatar’s position in the diplomatic crisis, prosecutors said in court filings.

Allen previously said through a spokesman that McMaster had approved of Allen going to Qatar and “offered the assistance of his staff in preparation.”

McMaster has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Olson, Allen and a Qatari government representative also met with members of Congress “for the purpose of convincing the U.S. lawmakers to support Qatar rather than its regional rivals,” prosecutors wrote in court records.

Allen’s spokesman said previously that the general’s work on Qatari issues only lasted three weeks and that it had nothing to do with Brookings.

Qatar has been one of Brookings' biggest donors for the last several years, according to annual reports that don't offer specific figures. A Brookings spokeswoman said Allen decided in 2019 to no longer accept new Qatari funding.

Olson is set to be sentenced Sept. 13.

___

Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia. Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

FTC says victims of crypto scams have lost more than $1 billion since 2021

Dado Ruvic / reuters

Amrita Khalid

·Contributing Writer

Fri, June 3, 2022

The world of crypto continues to draw scam artists and fraud. People have reported losing a combined total of over $1 billion due to crypto scams since the beginning of 2021, according to an FTC report released today. From January 2021 through March of this year, more than 46,000 individuals filed a crypto-related fraud report with the agency. The median individual reported loss in these reports was $2,600.

Perhaps ironically, the most common coins used in scams are also the most widely used, as well as a top stablecoin. A total of 70 percent of scams used Bitcoin as the payment method, followed by Tether (10 percent) and Ether (9 percent). Ether is the prime currency of choice for NFTs, a relatively new crypto market where fraudsters and hackers have thrived.

Crypto investment scams were the most common type of scam reported to the FTC, accounting for an estimated $575 million in losses. Normally these scams target amateur investors by promising them large returns in exchange for an initial investment.

“Investment scammers claim they can quickly and easily get huge returns for investors. But those crypto 'investments' go straight to a scammer’s wallet,” wrote the FTC’s Emma Fletcher in a blog post.

Romance scams also account for a large slice of reported scams, totaling $185 million in losses. Many of these scammers reach individuals by social media or dating apps. A type of dating app scam known as “pig slaughtering” — where criminals build a fake relationship with a victim in order to con them into investing in crypto — has become more common, reported CoinTelegraph.

It’s important to note that the FTC report is only a small snapshot of how much crypto fraud has truly occurred, since the agency is relying on direct reports submitted by victims. An FTC paper estimated that less than five percent of fraud victims reported it to a government entity, and likely an even smaller number report to the FTC. As crypto becomes more popular, the number of scams have also increased. Blockchain platform Chainanalysis estimated that illicit addresses received over $14 billion in crypto last year, nearly twice the amount in 2020.

Companies that exited Russia after its invasion of Ukraine are being rewarded with outsize stock-market returns, Yale study finds — and those that stayed are not

The almost 1,000 companies that have opted to pull out of Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine are not just benefiting from a reputational boost. They are also being rewarded by financial markets, while those who remain behind are being punished.


© MarketWatch photo illustration/iStockphoto

Ciara Linnane - Friday
MarketWatch

That’s according to a new report from Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team at the Yale School of Management. The team has been monitoring almost 1,300 companies that do business in Russia and has kept a list to highlight the decisions companies have made about staying or leaving since the start of the war on Feb. 24.


“We find that equity markets are actually rewarding companies for leaving Russia while punishing those that remain behind, with divergent stock performance generally corresponding with the degree of Russian exit — which holds true across regions, sectors and company sizes,” reads the Yale report.

What’s more, the focus on asset write-downs and lost revenue from Russia is misplaced. “We demonstrate that the shareholder wealth created through equity gains have already far surpassed the cost of one-time impairments for companies that have written down the value of their Russian assets,” asserts the report.
‘Clearly, doing well has not been antithetical to doing good — at least when it comes to withdrawing from Russia.’ — Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management

The Yale list is divided into five categories assigned grades A to F, with the latter letter being attached to companies that are “digging in,” or defying public calls to exit. There are now 29 U.S. companies in that category, although the situation remains highly fluid as corporate executives offer updates on their plans.

Background: Yale professor monitoring companies still doing business in Russia ups the ante by highlighting those that are now ‘digging in’

The other four categories are A, the grade for “withdraw,” which describes those companies making a clean break from Russia; B for “suspension,” for companies that are temporarily curtailing activities, while keeping their return options open; C for “scaling back,” or reducing some activities while continuing others; and D for “buying time,” for companies that are holding off on new investments in Russia, and in many cases closely aligned Belarus, while continuing most business there.

For the full list of companies: Visit the Yale School of Management website

The report measures total shareholder returns at those companies that have exited Russia relative to those that have stayed. Researchers used Feb. 23 as their start date as that, in the U.S., marked Russia’s launch of its overnight, full-scale invasion.

The Yale team used two end dates. The first was market close on Aril 8, as that offered a cutoff point before the start of first-quarter earnings season. That allowed the report to exclude the many other macro factors that were showing up in earnings, such as supply-chain snags and inflation, issues that led many companies to lower their analyst guidance.

The second was through market close on April 19, to provide the data set a full eight weeks from the start of the invasion. As an extra check, the report measured a third time period of Feb. 23 to March 14, to track the steep selloff that came immediately after Russia invaded.

Companies were organized based on the five categories of the list and were measured using a market-capitalization-weighted method, and an equal-weighted method, as the following tables illustrate:

The findings indicate that those companies with higher grades are clearly faring better than those with grades D and F. The market-cap weighting is likely a more accurate representation of category performance, as it reflects actual financial markets more closely, giving larger companies a greater weighting than smaller ones, the researchers noted.

“The pattern of F companies underperforming generally aligns with our anecdotal observations from updating the list in real-time,” they wrote.

From the time the list had its first airing on CNBC on March 7, many of the companies that had been identified as remaining in Russia suffered stock declines of 15% to 30%, even as key market indices were down just 2% to 3%.

See also: Opinion: Globalization failed for emerging markets. And now deglobalization will be put to the test

On the other side of the equation, the report also found that asset write-downs and lost revenue from pulling out of Russia were far exceeded by market-cap gains — including in some of the biggest cases.

At least six multinationals that booked significant write-downs — Heineken Shell Exxon Carlsberg AB InBev and Société Générale — have seen far more wealth created than has been destroyed in aggregate.

“Perhaps even more surprisingly, each of these companies had positive stock performance after the announcements of their exits from Russia and the values of their asset write-downs — after their stocks initially tanked in the period leading up to their announcement in most cases, as shown by the negative ‘war returns,’ ” the report states.

Those six companies incurred asset write-downs of over $14 billion but have generated nearly $39 billion in subsequent equity gains.

The report found that the gains enjoyed by companies that have curtailed their activities in Russia extend beyond public equity markets into credit markets, as measured by longer-dated corporate bond prices, credit spreads and related derivatives.

“Our sweeping analysis of global capital flows demonstrates the importance investors attribute to the decision to withdraw from Russia — and that investors believe the global reputational risk incurred by remaining in Russia at a time when nearly 1,000 major global corporations have exited far outweigh the costs of leaving,” says the report.

“Clearly, doing well has not been antithetical to doing good — at least when it comes to withdrawing from Russia.”

The Yale list has acted as a catalyst spurring companies into action, starting with about 12 that announced plans to fully withdraw from Russia immediately after the invasion of Ukraine. That number jumped to 70 over a single weekend in March. Since then, the list of leavers has steadily climbed to almost 1,000 in late May, and includes McDonald’s Corp. which has sold its entire Russia business to a local investor.

See: McDonald’s exit from Russia puts growth plans in disarray, analyst says

“The McDonald’s move was both symbolic and substantive,” Sonnenfeld told MarketWatch. “It was there since 1990 as almost a first anchor tenant, and a real flagship because of the global branding value.”

The fast-food giant’s exit “sent shock waves over the bow and surprised the big beverages companies, because McDonald’s is a leader,” he said.

Sonnenfeld has argued that sanctions are designed to bring the Russian economy to a standstill, as a way of helping Russians understand that their government’s attack on Ukraine is making the country an international pariah, and to spur them to push for change. Such measures require that companies voluntarily add their support to shore up efforts made by governments and international bodies.

There’s also the risk to companies that have not exited Russia operations of being boycotted by younger people, who as both prospective customers and employees are carefully attuned to corporate values and are quick to take action when they are disappointed.

“Business leaders are rewarded for speaking out,” Sonnenfeld said. “They’re the most ascendant set of institutional leaders in the world. Military leaders don’t have a voice.”

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich's British telecoms company Truphone, once worth half a billion dollars, to be sold for $1

Sam Tabahriti

Sat, June 4, 2022, 

Roman Abramovich no longer owns Chelsea FC.Clive Mason/Getty Images

• Roman Abramovich's Truphone is being sold for about $1 to two European entrepreneurs, a report says.

• The company had been worth $512 million in 2020, according to The Times.

• Abramovich is among the individuals sanctioned by the west following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A British telecoms company owned by Roman Abramovich is being sold to two European tech entrepreneurs for about $1, The Times reported.

Truphone, valued at $512 million ($410 million) in 2020, has received almost $375 million of investment from Abramovich and two business partners, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov. According to the newspaper, Abramovich owns 23% of the company.

Truphone hired the advisory firm FRP in April to review its "strategic options" following the sanctions imposed on the former owner of Chelsea FC.

Hakan Koc is one of the two entrepreneurs who has emerged as one of the preferred bidders for Truphone, according to The Times.

However, rivals are concerned about Koc's links to Frolov as his used car marketplace Auto1 has received funds from a firm run by Frolov's son.

Koc would own 90% of Truphone while his business associate, a former telecom executive and private equity investor, Pyrros Koussios, would own 10% of the company, the Financial Times reported. Truphone provides electronic SIM cards for companies and consumers.

Abramovich had to sell Chelsea FC after being hit by western sanctions amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The $5.3 billion deal was finalised last month to a group led by LA Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly and the investment firm Clearlake.

Abramovich was once one of Russia's richest oligarchs, worth an estimated $14 billion, but his wealth has nearly halved due to western sanctions.

According to the report, the current owners of Truphone have committed to invest more than $12 million and will take on certain contractual obligations, such as one-off payments and debts including a $660,000 fine from the Federal Communications Commission linked to the company's misrepresentation of ownership.

People familiar with the deal said that the existing owners would receive up to a third of the original funds invested, The Times reported. However, Abramovich will not receive the funds while he remains subject sanctions.

Insider has contacted Truphone for comment.

Elon Musk's back-to-the-office demand is 'like something out of the 1950s,' says Australian billionaire

Sam Tabahriti
Fri, June 3, 2022

Scott Farquhar (left) and Elon Musk had a Twitter spat.

Chris Hopins/Bauzen via Getty Images

Scott Farquhar, the CEO of Atlassian, has challenged Elon Musk's return-to-the-office directive.

He said the Tesla chief's call "feels like something out of the 1950s."

Musk sent a memo to Tesla employees saying they should return to the office full time or resign.

Scott Farquhar, an Australian billionaire, branded Elon Musk's decision to order Tesla staff back to the office full time like "something out of the 1950s."

Musk sent a memo on Tuesday telling employees to return to the office or resign. Musk said in one of the two emails tweeted by Samuel Nissim, who says he's a Tesla shareholder, that staff who continued to work remotely would be assumed to have resigned.

In a tweet, Farquhar said that Musk's comment that "everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week" was an outdated approach to "the future of how we will work."



Farquhar, who is worth more than $12 billion, Forbes estimated, is a cofounder and the CEO of the software company Atlassian. He said in his thread that his company takes a different approach to Musk's.

"Atlassian employees choose everyday where and how they want to work — we call it Team Anywhere. This has been key for our continued growth," he said. "This is the future of how we will work."

"In the past year alone, 42% of our new hires globally live 2 or more hours from an office. There is great talent all over the world — not just within a 1hr radius of our offices," Farquhar added.

He concluded: "We're setting our sights on growing Atlassian to 25K employees by FY26. Any Tesla employees interested?"

Musk responded: "The above set of tweets illustrate why recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function."

Meanwhile, the Tesla chief sent a memo to executives on Thursday titled "pause all hiring worldwide." He shared his concerns about the economic outlook and said he needed to cut 10% of jobs at the electric-car maker.

Jason Stomel, the founder of the tech talent agency Cadre, said of the return-to-work directive to Reuters, "I think there's potential that this is just a disguised layoff, meaning they're able to get rid of people with attrition, or without having to actually have a layoff."

Elon Musk Wants to Cut Tesla Staff. 

That’s Not What GM, Ford Are Doing.

.Joe Woelfel Fri, June 3, 2022, 

Tech and crypto firms experienced massive layoffs in May. Here’s how bad it really is

Andrew Marquardt

Sat, June 4, 2022,

Kena Betancur—VIEW press/Getty Images

Last month, Fortune reported that the tech industry’s 2021 hiring boom seemed to be slowing down. One month later, it’s clear that the boom is over.

Amid rising inflation rates and slowing demand, tech and crypto companies cut more jobs in the month of May than in the previous four months combined, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, as first reported by MarketWatch.

There were 4,044 job cuts in the tech industry in May, compared to around 500 through the first four months of the year and the most in one month since December 2020, according to the Challenger, Gray & Christmas figures. Crypto and other companies in the fintech industry cut 1,619 jobs in May, compared to 440 in January through April.

"Many technology startups that saw tremendous growth in 2020—particularly in the real estate, financial, and delivery sectors—are beginning to see a slowdown in users, and coupled with inflation and interest rate concerns, are restructuring their workforces to cut costs," Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told Reuters.

Many of the world’s top tech and crypto companies announced plans to slow down hiring last month amid what Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described as a reaction to a “seismic shift” in the markets.

Khosrowshahi told employees last month the company will begin to “treat hiring as a privilege” as a means for cutting costs. Facebook parent company Meta announced in early May it was slowing or pausing hiring mid- to senior-level positions for the same reason. A week later, Salesforce made a similar announcement.

Last week, Microsoft announced it was slowing hiring in its Windows, Office, and Teams chat and conferencing software groups, citing a need to realign staffing priorities. Shares of Snap Inc. dropped as much as 30% last week after CEO Evan Spiegel announced the company was slowing down hiring for the rest of the year and expected to miss its quarterly revenue and earnings targets.

On Friday, crypto exchange Coinbase announced it was pausing hiring “for the foreseeable future” as a result of market conditions, and even went as far as rescinding job offers to people who had recently accepted jobs there but had not yet started to work.

Other companies have taken it a step further and have started to lay off employees.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Friday that the company plans to cut 10% of jobs for salaried workers, according to Electrek. Musk said in an internal email that Tesla has “become overstaffed in many areas,” prompting the upcoming layoffs.

Insurtech platform Policytech laid off 25% of its staff in recent weeks, less than three months after it raised more than $125 million in investments, according to reporting from TechCrunch.

In April, digital brokerage app Robinhood said it would be cutting 9% of its workforce, after the company’s headcount grew from around 700 employees in 2019 to 3,800 at the end of 2021. Also in April, streaming giant Netflix laid off dozens of employees from its Tudum editorial companion site after losing 200,000 subscribers in the previous quarter.

Despite the recent slew of layoffs and hiring slow-downs among tech and crypto firms, the latest U.S. jobs report showed 390,000 job gains in May, outpacing expectations.

Job growth in May was led by steady hiring in leisure and hospitality, business services, and education and health care, Bloomberg reported.

Crypto: Coinbase and the Winklevoss Twins Confirm Tough Times Are Ahead

The cryptocurrency market has been struggling since the beginning of the year.

LUC OLINGA
15 HOURS AGO

The tough time that the crypto sphere is going through is not about to go away.

Judging by the recent decisions announced by the big names in the sector, it is even logical to say that what industry sources call "crypto winter" will continue for several more weeks, at least, even if volatility is the key word in the space.

The last episode of "crypto winter" lasted from 2018 to fall 2020 before prices rebounded and soared to record highs in 2021.

Coinbase (COIN) , the most popular of American digital currency trading platforms, has just announced new cost-saving measures. These include an indefinite suspension of hiring. Worse, the firm will rescind certain job offers made to candidates.

"In response to the current market conditions and ongoing business prioritization efforts, we will extend our hiring pause for both new and backfill roles for the foreseeable future and rescind a number of accepted offers," L.J Brock, chief people officer, said in a blog post on June 2.

"It’s become evident that we need to take more stringent measures to slow our headcount growth," Brock added. "Adapting quickly and acting now will help us to successfully navigate this macro environment and emerge even stronger, enabling further healthy growth and innovation."

The extended hiring pause does not include roles that are related to security and compliance, the company said.

As for the cancellation of accepted job offers, Coinbase said this will apply to "people who have not started yet."

'Coinbase Will Cone Out Stronger'

"We always knew crypto would be volatile, but that volatility alongside larger economic factors may test the company, and us personally, in new ways. If we’re flexible and resilient, and remain focused on the long term, Coinbase will come out stronger on the other side," Brock concluded.

The challenges of which the executive speaks are linked to fears of a recession in the economy. These fears have prompted many investors to liquidate risky assets, such as cryptocurrencies.

Recent scandals, such as the collapse of the UST and Luna coins, have also reminded investors that the industry is still young and therefore subject to many ups and downs.

The crypto market has lost over $1.7 trillion in value since November.

The price of Bitcoin is down 57% from its all-time high of $69,044.77 reached on Nov. 10. The king of cryptocurrencies is now trading around $29,846.33 at last check, according to data firm CoinGecko.

Ether, the second crypto in terms of market value, is worth 64% less than when it broke its record high of $4,878.26 on Nov. 10. It's currently trading around $1,780.06.

As for Coinbase, its market capitalization has shrunk by more than $48 billion since January, while the stock has lost about 74% of its value to $66.69 as of June 3.

'We Are Not Alone'

Gemini, another platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, is also reducing costs. And that means job cuts. The firm was founded in 2014 by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who came to prominence after they and a classmate claimed that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook.

"We have asked team leaders to ensure that they are focused only on products that are critical to our mission and assess whether their teams are right-sized for the current, turbulent market conditions that are likely to persist for some time," Cameron and Tyler wrote in a blog post. "After much thought and consideration, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to part ways with approximately 10% of our workforce."

The crypto revolution is well underway and its impact will continue to be profound. But its trajectory has been anything but gradual or predictable. Its path can best be described as punctuated equilibrium — periods of equilibrium or stasis that are punctuated by dramatic moments of hypergrowth, followed by sharp contractions that settle down to a new equilibrium that is higher than the one before."

"This is where we are now, in the contraction phase that is settling into a period of stasis — what our industry refers to as “crypto winter.” This has all been further compounded by the current macroeconomic and geopolitical turmoil. We are not alone."

This is the first time Gemini has cut jobs. The firm employs 1,033 people, according to PitchBook, and was valued at $7.1 billion in its last funding round. A 10% reduction would therefore amount to laying off a little more than 100 people.