Chinese fast fashion brand SHEIN is 'increasing threat to U.S. specialty retailers,' UBS says

Dani Romero

Sun, June 26, 2022 

Chinese fast fashion retailer SHEIN has become the "most downloaded" shopping app in the U.S., according to UBS Evidence Lab's Global App Monitor, as well as the "most searched-for [apparel] retailer in the U.S."

Founded in 2008, the online-only retailer of inexpensive clothes, beauty, and lifestyle products has become a global phenomenon in the age of TikTok. SHEIN has grown from a $15 billion valuation in 2020 to now being valued at $100 billion in a recent funding round, WSJ reports.

Strong momentum with consumers "explains much of the valuation increase," UBS analysts wrote. "The data also causes us to believe SHEIN is a major and increasing threat to US specialty retailers" such as American Eagle (AEO), Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), Urban Outfitters (URBN), Victoria's Secret (VSCO), The Gap (GPS) "as well as Department Stores and Off-Price retailers."

Despite having no network of physical stores, SHEIN is the No. 1 brand on TikTok and has proven to be a huge success among Generation Z. The e-commerce site has been the second favorite website for shopping among teens (behind Amazon) for the last two years, according to Piper Sandler's semi-annual Gen Z survey.

Faye Winter attends the SHEIN x Klarna pop up event on April 08, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for SHEIN)

The retailer's strength with a younger consumer comes from leveraging social media better than many of its competitors.

SHEIN's TikTok followers increased 162% year-over-year. The retailer has 1060% more followers than Macy's (M), according to UBS Evidence Lab's TikTok Tracker, and that has translated into 19% more Google searches than Macy's in May.

A UBS survey of 7,500 consumers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, China, Japan, South Africa, and Australia found that the SHEIN's average consumer is female, younger, and lower-income. Consumers on the site tend to buy casual wear and undergarments/sleepwear.

The top reason why U.S. customers are shopping SHEIN is its affordable pricing, the survey said. The site pushes discounts to the limit, offering blouses for $2.90 or a pajama set for less than $15. Other reasons consumers are drawn to the site, according to the survey, are its "style that suits me" and "on trend designs."

Figure 7: SHEIN Purchase Habits US vs. US Survey responses Avg.

SHEIN has pursued an aggressive, data-driven “fast-fashion” business model, which has made the brand popular among price-sensitive consumers but also drawn criticism for its enormous environmental footprint. That poses a formidable challenge for the industry's push toward sustainability as well as for competitors.

"We continue to believe [specialty retailer] stock prices will remain under pressure," the UBS analysts wrote, citing inflation, market sentiment, and decelerating sales. "SHEIN represents another underappreciated headwind negatively impacting earnings for the public Softlines companies, in our view."

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @daniromerotv

Did corporate greed fuel inflation? It’s not biggest culprit
By PAUL WISEMAN

June 26, 2022

FILE - Wallace Reid purchases fuel for the vehicle he drives to make a living using ride-share apps, Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Furious about surging prices at the gasoline station and the supermarket, many consumers feel they know just where to cast blame: On greedy companies that relentlessly jack up prices and pocket the profits.

Responding to that sentiment, the Democratic-led House of Representatives last month passed on a party-line vote — most Democrats for, all Republicans against — a bill designed to crack down on alleged price gouging by energy producers.

Likewise, Britain last month announced plans to impose a temporary 25% windfall tax on oil and gas company profits and to funnel the proceeds to financially struggling households.

Yet for all the public’s resentment, most economists say corporate price gouging is, at most, one of many causes of runaway inflation — and not the primary one.

“There are much more plausible candidates for what’s going on,” said Jose Azar an economist at Spain’s University of Navarra.

They include: Supply disruptions at factories, ports and freight yards. Worker shortages. President Joe Biden’s enormous pandemic aid program. COVID 19-caused shutdowns in China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And, not least, a Federal Reserve that kept interest rates ultra-low longer than experts say it should have.

Most of all, though, economists say resurgent spending by consumers and governments drove inflation up.

The blame game is, if anything, intensifying after the U.S. government reported that inflation hit 8.6% in May from a year earlier, the biggest price spike since 1981.

To fight inflation, the Fed is now belatedly tightening credit aggressively. On June 15, it raised its benchmark short-term rate by three-quarters of a point — its largest hike since 1994 — and signaled that more large rate hikes are coming. The Fed hopes to achieve a notoriously difficult “soft landing” — slowing growth enough to curb inflation without causing the economy to slide into recession.

For years, inflation had remained at or below the Fed’s 2% annual target, even while unemployment sank to a half-century low. But when the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession with startling speed and strength, the U.S. consumer price index rose steadily — from a 2.6% year-over-year increase in March 2021 to last month’s four-decade high.

For a while at least — before profit margins at S&P 500 companies dipped early this year — the inflation surge coincided with swelling corporate earnings. It was easy for consumers to connect the dots: Companies, it seemed, were engaged in price-gouging. This wasn’t just inflation. It was greedflation.

Asked to name the culprits behind the spike in gasoline prices, 72% of the 1,055 Americans polled in late April and early May by the Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government blamed profit-seeking corporations, more than the share who pointed to Russia’s war against Ukraine (69%) or Biden (58%) or pandemic disruptions (58%). And the verdict was bipartisan: 86% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans blamed corporations for inflated gas prices.

“It’s very natural for consumers to see prices rising and get angry about it and then look for someone to blame,” said Christopher Conlon, an economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business who studies corporate competition. “You and I don’t get to set prices at the supermarket, the gas station or the car dealership. So people naturally blame corporations, since those are the ones they see raising prices.’’

Yet Conlon and many other economists are reluctant to indict — or to favor punishing — Corporate America. When the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business asked economists this month whether they’d support a law to bar big companies from selling their goods or services at an “unconscionably excessive price” during a market shock, 65% said no. Only 5% backed the idea.

Just what combination of factors is most responsible for causing prices to soar “is still an open question,” economist Azar acknowledges. COVID-19 and its aftermath have made it hard to assess the state of the economy. Today’s economists have no experience analyzing the financial aftermath of a pandemic.

Policymakers and analysts have been repeatedly blindsided by the path the economy has taken since COVID struck in March 2020: They didn’t expect the swift recovery from the downturn, fueled by vast government spending and record-low rates engineered by the Fed and other central banks. Then they were slow to recognize the gathering threat of high inflation pressures, dismissing them at first as merely a temporary consequence of supply disruptions.

One aspect of the economy, though, is undisputed: A wave of mergers in recent decades has killed or shrunk competition among airlines, banks, meatpacking companies and many other industries. That consolidation has given the surviving companies the leverage to demand price cuts from suppliers, to hold down workers’ pay and to pass on higher costs to customers who don’t have much choice but to pay up.

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have found that less competition made it easier for companies to pass along higher costs to customers, calling it an “amplifying factor” in the resurgence of inflation.

Josh Bivens, research director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, has estimated that nearly 54% of the price increases in nonfinancial businesses since mid-2020 can be attributed to “fatter profit margins,” versus just 11% from 1979 through 2019.

Bivens conceded that neither corporate greed nor market clout has likely grown significantly in the past two years. But he suggested that during the COVID inflationary spike, companies have redirected how they use their market power: Many have shifted away from pressuring suppliers to cut costs and limiting workers’ pay and have instead boosted prices for customers.

In a study of nearly 3,700 companies released last week, the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute concluded that markups and profit margins last year reached their highest level since the 1950s. It also found that companies that had aggressively raised prices before the pandemic were more likely to do so after it struck, “suggesting a role for market power as an explanatory driver of inflation.″

Yet many economists aren’t convinced that corporate greed is the main culprit. Jason Furman, a top economic adviser in the Obama White House, said that some evidence even suggests that monopolies are slower than companies that face stiff competition to raise prices when their own costs rise, “in part because their prices were high to begin with.”

Likewise, NYU’s Conlon cites examples where prices have soared in competitive markets. Used cars, for example, are sold in lots across the country and by numerous individuals. Yet average used-car prices have skyrocketed 16% over the past year. Similarly, the average price of major appliances, another market with plenty of competitors, jumped nearly 10% last month from a year earlier.

By contrast, the price of alcoholic beverages has risen just 4% from a year ago even though the beer market is dominated by AB-Inbev and spirits by Bacardi and Diageo.

“It is hard to imagine that AB-Inbev isn’t as greedy as Maytag,” Conlon said.

So what has most driven the inflationary spike?

“Demand,” said Furman, now at Harvard University. “Lots of government spending, lots of monetary support — all combined together to support extraordinarily high levels of demand. Supply couldn’t keep up, so prices rose.’’

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco estimate that government aid to the economy during the pandemic, which put money in consumers’ pockets to help them endure the crisis and set off a spending spree, has raised inflation by about 3 percentage points since the first half of 2021.

In report released in April, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis blamed global supply chain bottlenecks for playing a “significant role” in inflating factory costs. They found that it added a staggering 20 percentage points to wholesale inflation in manufacturing last November, raising it to 30%.

Still, even some economists who don’t blame greedflation for the price spike of the past year say they think governments should try to restrict the market power of monopolies, perhaps by blocking mergers that reduce competition. The idea is that more companies vying for the same customers would encourage innovation and makes the economy more productive.

Even so, tougher antitrust policies wouldn’t likely do much to slow inflation anytime soon.

“I find it helpful to think about competition like diet and exercise,” NYU’s Conlon said. “More competition is a good thing. But, like diet and exercise, the payoffs are long term.

“Right now, the patient is in the emergency room. Sure, diet and exercise are still a good thing. But we need to treat the acute problem of inflation.”

___

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

AP PHOTOS: Israel's separation barrier, 20 years on

ODED BALILTY
Mon, June 27, 2022 at 12:06 AM·4 min read

JERUSALEM (AP) — Twenty years after Israel decided to build its controversial separation barrier, the network of walls, fences and closed military roads remains in place, even as any partition of the land appears more remote than ever.

Israel is actively encouraging its Jewish citizens to settle on both sides of the barrier as it builds and expands settlements deep inside the occupied West Bank, more than a decade after the collapse of any serious peace talks.

Palestinians living under decades of military occupation, meanwhile, clamor for work permits inside Israel, where wages are higher. Some 100,000 Palestinians legally cross through military checkpoints, mainly to work in construction, manufacturing and agriculture.

Israel decided to build the barrier in June 2002, at the height of the second intifada, or uprising, when Palestinians carried out scores of suicide bombings and other attacks that killed Israeli civilians. Authorities said the barrier was designed to prevent attackers from crossing into Israel from the West Bank and was never intended to be a permanent border.


Eighty-five percent of the still-unfinished barrier is inside the West Bank, carving off nearly 10% of its territory. The Palestinians view it as an illegal land grab and the International Court of Justice in 2004 said the barrier was “contrary to international law.”

The United Nations estimates that some 150 Palestinian communities have farmland inside the West Bank but west of the barrier. Some 11,000 Palestinians live in this so-called Seam Zone, requiring Israeli permits just to stay in their homes.

The U.N. also estimates that about 65% of the roughly 710-kilometer (450-mile) structure has been completed.

The security benefits of the barrier have long been subject to debate and while the number of attacks has fallen sharply, other factors may be at play.

The intifada began winding down in 2005, after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died and was replaced by President Mahmoud Abbas, who is opposed to armed struggle. Most leading militants were captured or killed, and under Abbas, the Palestinian Authority cooperates with Israel on security matters. Israeli troops regularly operate in all parts of the West Bank, and Israel often announces that it has thwarted attacks before the assailants ever left the territory.

Earlier this year, during a renewed wave of violence, Israeli media reported that authorities have long ignored gaps in the barrier because they are used by Palestinian laborers. Those are now being closed, but the barrier is not expected to be completed anytime soon.

Last week, Israel began construction on a new barrier, some 45 kilometers (almost 30 miles) long in the northern West Bank, to replace a security fence built two decades ago. It says the new barrier will be 9 meters (30 feet) high — more than twice as high as the Berlin Wall.

Concrete walls that high can already be seen snaking through Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other urban areas. Near a main Israeli highway, the barrier is concealed behind dirt embankments planted with trees and flowers. In other rural areas, it consists of barbed wire fences with surveillance cameras and closed military roads.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians want for a future state.

In Gaza, which has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the Hamas militant group seized power from Abbas' forces in 2007, Israel recently completed a high-tech barrier that runs along the 1967 boundary.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by the international community and views the entire city as its capital. But towering concrete walls cut off dense Palestinian neighborhoods that are within the Israeli-drawn municipal boundaries and have largely severed the city from the occupied West Bank.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in major population centers, but Israel retains total control over 60% of the territory. There it has built more than 130 settlements that are home to nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers. Many live on the other side of the barrier but have access to a rapidly growing highway system linking the settlements to Israeli cities.

With any peace process effectively frozen, the government has instead pursued what it refers to as goodwill gestures — mainly the issuing of more permits so Palestinians can enter through checkpoints and work inside Israel.

___

Follow Oded Balilty on Twitter at www.twitter.com/obalilty

___

Follow Associated Press photographers and photo editors on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AP_Images and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/apnews

Deer graze next to section of Israel's separation barrier between Jerusalem and the West Bank village of A-Ram, Sunday, Feb. 6, 2022. Twenty years after Israel decided to built its controversial separation barrier amid a wave of Palestinian attacks, it remains in place, even as Israel encourages its own citizens to settle on both sides and admits tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)More

Israel to let more Palestinians work in manufacturing to fill labour shortage

 Palestinian men from Gaza enter Israel to work


Sun, June 26, 2022 
By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet approved issuing 3,500 additional permits for Palestinian workers in Israel's manufacturing and services sectors, increasing the number to 12,000 to help relieve a shortage of skilled staff, the Economy Ministry said on Sunday.

Workers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War, require permits to cross checkpoints and enter Israel where wages are higher.

Israel employs nearly 100,000 West Bank and Gaza Palestinian workers, according to the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority. But most work in construction or agriculture, with only a comparatively small number given permits for jobs in factories or the services sector.

Israel's jobless rate is around 3%, and the economy ministry said the existence of 14,000 vacancies in manufacturing was creating a barrier to economic growth.

Economy Minister Orna Barbivai said in a statement that in addition to the extra work permits for Palestinians, the ministry plans to work to increase manufacturing productivity through automation and digitalisation.

The quota for Palestinian workers in manufacturing will automatically be reduced if the annual average unemployment rate in Israel rises above 7.5%, the government said.

Ron Tomer, head of Israel's Manufacturers' Association, called the decision to boost numbers of Palestinians allowed to work in Israel a "lifeline" for the industrial sector given severe shortages of workers.

"There are currently thousands of open jobs that manufacturers find difficult to fill, and we believe that increasing the quota will help reduce the severe shortage at least in the short and medium term and help the industry continue to operate and grow in Israel," he said.

S.Africa's Eskom says Stage 4 power cuts continue amid labour action

CAPE TOWN, June 26 (Reuters) - South Africa's Eskom will continue with "Stage 4" power cuts until Wednesday as unlawful labour action at various plants impact maintenance work, the state-owned power utility said on Sunday.

Suffering some of its worst electricity generation problems in a decade of forced power cuts, known locally as load shedding, Eskom's struggles have recently taken a turn for the worse due to a salary dispute with workers.

"Eskom regrets to inform the public that Stage 4 loadshedding is anticipated to continue from 05:00 on Monday morning until midnight at least until Wednesday," the utility said in a statement.

"This is due to unlawful and unprotected labour action at a number of power stations, which has caused delays in carrying out planned maintenance and repairs".

On Friday the firm was forced to widen electricity cuts over the weekend as labour protests linked to deadlocked wage talks disrupt operations.

The utility, which has struggled to meet power demand in Africa's most industrialised nation for over a decade, has been implementing "Stage 2" rotational outages.

However, it increased the severity of the outages to "Stage 4," requiring up to 4,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity to be shed from the national grid and meant to end at 2200 GMT on Sunday. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Peru truckers, farmers to strike over fuel and fertilizer costs

People walk next to parked trucks during a national transportation 

strike against fuel prices, in Lima

Marco Aquino
Sun, June 26, 2022 
By Marco Aquino

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's truckers and some farm groups will go on strike on Monday after failing to reach agreements with the government seeking measures to reduce the impact of steep global price rises of fuel and fertilizer, sector leaders said on Sunday.

Union leaders met on Friday and Saturday with government representatives, with demands including considering freight transport a "public service" that would reduce costs and curb competition from truckers from neighbor countries.

"We are firm in plans to strike with all our bases nationwide," the leader of the heavy load haulage and drivers union Marlon Milla told radio station RPP. The union has 400,000 cargo transport units in 14 of the 25 regions of the country.

High global fuel prices linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine have stoked unrest in Peru, the world's No. 2 copper producer, while shortages of fertilizer have raised fears over food supply with the government struggling to secure shipments.

The government of leftist President Pedro Castillo, who has seen his popularity tumble since taking office last year, has taken measures to curb the rising cost of living, but the annual inflation rate remains at around 8%, its highest level in 24 years.

Some farming unions also announced strikes on Monday, in protest at the rise in fertilizer prices and shortages.

Latin American leaders are grappling to bring down spiraling prices despite major interest rate hikes. Trucking protests over fuel costs have hit Argentina while Ecuador is being roiled by protests in part linked to gas prices. [L4N2YB27W]

"The dialogue has not been exhausted, we are in a permanent session of ministers to avoid protest," Justice Minister Félix Chero told reporters on Sunday. The government is offering subsidies for road tolls and fertilizer costs.

AUSTRALIA
Climate change protest throws Sydney traffic into chaos, 11 arrested

Renju Jose Reuters
PUBLISHEDJUN 26, 2022

Climate change protesters marched in Sydney on Monday forcing police to close major roads in the city centre while morning traffic through the landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge was disrupted after a woman chained herself to her vehicle.
CREDIT: REUTERS/CORDELIA HSU

SYDNEY, June 27 (Reuters) - Climate change protesters marched in Sydney on Monday forcing police to close major roads in the city centre while morning traffic through the landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge was disrupted after a woman chained herself to her vehicle.

Eleven people were arrested, including the woman who police said allegedly put a bicycle lock around her neck and the steering wheel of a vehicle that was blocking all city-bound lanes. The vehicle has since been removed.

Dozens of members of Blockade Australia, a climate activist group, moved across major roads causing peak-hour traffic chaos for motorists and pedestrians. Television footage showed some people throwing garbage bins, construction barricades and milk crates on the road.

Banging drums and chanting "Australia's climate destruction ends here", protesters held banners with slogans including "Disrupt Sydney" and "Resist climate inaction". Police estimated about 60 people were part of the protest.

Blockade Australia said the rally was in response to "Australia's continued blocking of climate action". The protests will continue all week, the organisers said on Twitter.

Climate change is a contentious issue in Australia which is one of the world's biggest carbon emitters on a per capita basis and is the world's top exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas.

Under a new Labor government, Australia early this month raised the amount of carbon emissions it aims to cut by 2030, bringing the country more in line with other developed economies' Paris climate accord commitments.

Climate experts have said global warming is likely to make extreme weather more frequent in Australia, where the last three years have seen devastating bushfires and frequent flooding.

(Reporting by Renju Jose; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Climate protesters begin week of major disruptions in Sydney CBD

As police comb through CCTV footage of Monday’s “dangerous” protest in Sydney, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has had his say.

Madeleine Achenza
June 27, 2022 - 

Vision captures the moment a car drove into protesters.

Wild moment as Sydney protester wiped out
Dom’s ultimatum to ’dumb’ protesters
Report ScoMo didn't want you to see

NSW Police has a message for climate activists who caused chaos for Monday morning commuters in Sydney – expect a knock on your door.

Protesters took to the streets of the CBD in an unauthorised demonstration to protest political inaction on climate change.

Terrifying aerial vision has captured the moment one vehicle ignored traffic controllers, driving into police and protesters blocking traffic.

Strike Force Guard detectives are aware of the vision and are conducting inquiries.

It is not known if anyone was injured during the incident.

A police officer grabbed a protester by his backpack. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper


Demonstrations began around 8am at Hyde Park, where police allege about 60 protesters joined protest activity across the city’s streets.

Eleven people have been arrested, the majority taken to Surry Hills and Day Street police stations, where charges are expected.

Protesters threw concrete blocks, garbage bins, bikes and ladders onto the city streets in an effort to disrupt traffic and delay police officers trying to put a stop to the protest.

“The behaviour of this group was nothing short of criminal activity,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Paul Dunstan told reporters on Monday afternoon.
Police made 11 arrests throughout the morning with charges expected to be laid soon. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Police try to contain Blockade Australia protesters as they disrupt CBD traffic.

 Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

He described the protesters’ behaviour as “incredibly dangerous, unacceptable” and “violent”.

There have been no reports of injuries at this stage.

NSW Police trailed the parade of protesters on foot and via a convoy of vehicles with sirens wailing, cleaning up after the protesters in an attempt to clear roads.

The Sydney Harbour Tunnel has reopened after a protester parked a car across the road at the southbound entrance around 8am.
Police officers followed in step behind protesters marching through the streets. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper


Blockade Australia has identified the protester as 22-year-old Mali*, who live streamed themself disrupting traffic at the tunnel with her head locked to her steering wheel with a bike lock.

A man can be heard approaching the car and angrily shouting profanities at the protester.

“To those people who are really angry right now, I understand, and it’s not a good thing to be experiencing. You know what? Climate change isn’t a good thing to be experiencing,” Mali said.

The 22-year-old Lismore resident was arrested and taken to North Sydney police station, where charges are anticipated.

A Lismore resident identified as 22-year-old Mali locked themself to a steering wheel on the Harbour Bridge Tunnel. Picture: Facebook

Protesters are disrupting traffic across the Sydney CBD.

 Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Police have since removed the vehicle and all lanes of traffic have reopened.

“It’s been a pretty full-on year,” Mali said on the live stream.


“I was lucky but I was in Lismore for both of the major floods.

“I’ve seen a lot of devastation, I’ve seen people that I love lose everything, I’ve seen places that I love be destroyed.”

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has weighed in on the protest action by writing into 2GB radio station.

“These people are bloody idiots, and they will face the full force of the law,” Mr Perrottet said.

Police have confirmed that protesters will be charged under new protest laws passed in April.

Protesters and police move roadside barriers back and forth during strike action. 

Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Protesters pick up construction material from the kerb and throw it onto the street. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Protesters can be fined up to $22,000 and/or jailed for a maximum of two years for protesting illegally on public roads, rail lines, tunnels, bridges and industrial estates.

Police will continue to review CCTV and other video sources to identify and arrest those involved in the protest.

“There is a way to do it and way they did it today is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Assistant Commissioner Dunstan said.

“Expect a knock on your door. We will be coming to arrest you.”

Blockade Australia spokesman Sally-Anne* told reporters on Monday that she rejected claims that the protest was unauthorised.

Protesters knocked over barricades. 

Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Police have warned protesters to expect a ‘knock on the door’ as more arrests expected following appeals for video footage. 

Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper,


“There's no need to get authorisation for a protest,” she said.

“It is terrifying to do nothing and it is also terrifying to act out but it's necessary.”

The protest action comes a week after police raided a camp in Colo Valley, north of Sydney, where about 40 climate activists were found preparing for the week-long disruption.

The climate action group has been vocal about the protests since March when they conducted a series of extreme stunts across the CBD to disrupt commuter traffic.

Police will continue to patrol major roads and highways leading into the CBD as well as previous protest locations, including Port Botany and railway stations, throughout the week.

Blockade Australia will hold a press conference at 2.30pm at Redfern Park.

*Blockade Australia uses first-names to identify activists.

Ukraine's richest man sues Russia at Europe's top human rights court


Destroyed facilities are seen at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol

Mon, June 27, 2022 
By Max Hunder

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's richest man filed a lawsuit against Russia at Europe’s top human rights court on Monday, seeking compensation over what he has said are billions of dollars in business losses since Russia's invasion.

Rinat Akhmetov, owner of the Azovstal steelworks in the city of Mariupol where Ukrainian fighters defied weeks of Russian bombardment, sued Russia for "grievous violations of his property rights" at the European Court of Human Rights, his System Capital Management (SCM) holding company said.

It said Akhmetov was also seeking a court order "preventing Russia from engaging in further blockading, looting, diversion and destruction of grain and steel" produced by his companies.

"Evil cannot go unpunished. Russia's crimes against Ukraine and our people are egregious, and those guilty of them must be held liable," SCM quoted Akhmetov as saying.

"The looting of Ukraine’s export commodities, including grain and steel, has already resulted in higher prices and people dying of hunger worldwide. These barbaric actions must be stopped, and Russia must pay in full."

Asked about the suit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was no longer under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.

"We left the (jurisdiction of) relevant documents. Therefore, here the answer is absolutely obvious," he said.

Russia has previously dismissed Ukrainian allegations of stealing from territories it has occupied during what it calls a special military operation in Ukraine.

Forbes magazine put Akhmetov's net worth at $15.4 billion in 2013. Since then, his business empire has been hit by Russia's Feb. 24 invasion and by years of fighting in Ukraine’s east since Russia-backed separatists seized territory there in 2014.

Akhmetov said last month his company Metinvest, Ukraine's largest steelmaker, had suffered $17 to $20 billion in losses because of Russia's bombardment of its steel plants in Mariupol. The final amount would be determined in a lawsuit, he said.

WAR CRIME

Scenes of Horror as Putin Hits Mall With ‘1,000 People’ Inside

Shannon Vavra

Mon, June 27, 2022 

Ukrainian State Emergency Service / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty

Russia fired a series of rockets at a shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on Monday, raising fears that Russia is stepping up its attacks on civilian structures regardless of the loss of life.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday there were more than a thousand civilians inside the shopping mall and the casualties to come might bring even more shock and horror to Ukrainian people already confronting so much death and destruction as Russia has been waging war in Ukraine for 124 days.

“The number of victims is impossible to imagine,” Zelensky said on Telegram. “The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire.”

Authorities have reported 11 people killed in the attack so far, according to the chairman of the Poltava oblast, Dmitry Lunin. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, said they have documented 20 injured.

Videos from the scene that a member of the Ukrainian parliament shared show smoke billowing out from the shopping center and fires raging skyward.

The walls of the structure were beginning to collapse shortly after the missile struck the building, according to one witness sharing footage from the scene.

Rescuers attempting to reach civilians were confronted with a wall of smoke, according to footage from the rescue mission shared by NEXTA TV.

It’s just the latest example of Russian forces targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure that have no strategic importance to fighting a war with Ukraine. In the early days of the war, Putin attacked a maternity hospital. Just Monday the adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andriushchenko, said that more than 100 bodies of dead civilians are near the rubble of a destroyed residential building in Mariupol. In the last several days, Russian shelling has also hit residential buildings in the Odesa region, according to Operational Command South.

The prosecutor General’s Office said Monday that since the outbreak of the war, Russian troops have committed more than 19,700 crimes against Ukraine and its citizens.

Moscow has previously claimed that it hasn’t been targeting civilians in the war.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said the incident is a reminder that Ukraine needs more weapons to help confront the menace of war with Russia.“We need weapons to protect ourselves and modern air defense systems,” Gerashchenko said.

As some worry that American attention to the war in Ukraine is fading, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, said this is a stark reminder that the United States and allies can continue to try to punish the Russian government as Putin’s forces continue to commit war crimes in Ukraine.“Yet another war crime by [R]ussian murderers in Ukraine in this cruel war. We all have to #StopRussiaNow,” Markarova said.

The attack comes just a day after Russian forces launched missile attacks on both Kyiv and Kharkiv. Russia carried out approximately 60 strikes over the weekend, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters on a call Monday. The flurry of escalation in central Ukrainian cities is raising concerns that Russia’s war has not shifted permanently to the east and that instead, Putin is capable of ramping up attacks throughout the country.

Earlier this month, Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview the current U.S. assessment is that Putin still has plans to try taking all of Ukraine.