Saudi Billionaire Made $500 Million Russia Bet at War Onset

Matthew Martin
Mon, August 15, 2022 


(Bloomberg) -- Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal invested more than $500 million in Russian firms around the time of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, in a sign of the careful political position the Gulf state has maintained with its OPEC+ partner.

Prince Alwaleed’s investment firm, Kingdom Holding Co., acquired depositary receipts issued by Gazprom PSJC, Lukoil PJSC and Rosneft PJSC in February, according to a stock exchange filing. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

No specific dates for the investments were given, and the Saudi firm didn’t respond to questions about whether it still owned them. The value of all those depositary receipts dropped rapidly after the war began, when trading in Moscow was halted and western sanctions were imposed on Russia.

Alwaleed, whose grandfather was the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, is one of the country’s richest men and most high profile international investors. More recently he has been eclipsed by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, chaired by his cousin, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which acquired a 16.9% stake in Kingdom Holding Co. in May.

Saudi Wealth Fund Takes $1.5 Billion Stake in Alwaleed Firm

The investments highlight Saudi Arabia’s delicate relationship with Russia throughout the conflict as many of its Gulf neighbors have pulled back.

President Vladimir Putin and the kingdom’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have spoken several times since the start of the war. Both countries have working together within the OPEC+ oil producers group to manage crude supply, largely resisted calls from Western leaders including US President Joe Biden to help tackle global inflation concerns by increasing oil output.

Ritz-Carlton

Prince Alwaleed was detained at the Saudi capital’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in 2017 along with other princes and government officials as part of what the state called an anti-corruption probe. No formal charges were ever presented, and he was released after 83 days, having reached an undisclosed “confirmed understanding” with the government.

Kingdom Holding invested 1.37 billion riyals ($365 million) in Gazprom’s American depositary receipts in February, the biggest stake of those disclosed so far this year. It also invested 196 million riyals in Rosneft’s global depositary receipts the same month, and 410 million riyals in Lukoil’s American depositary receipts between February and March.

The purchases are part of Kingdom Holding’s investment program that’s focused on alternative financing, energy, entertainment, artificial intelligence, insurance, asset management, commodities and funds.

Other Investments

The Saudi firm invested $3.4 billion in global equities and depositary receipts since 2020, based on the filing, a rare bit of disclosure by the company. The largest stake was an investment valued at 2.5 billion riyals in Spain’s Telefonica SA between April to August 2020.

It also disclosed stakes in Uber Technologies Inc., TotalEnergies SE, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and BHP Group Ltd., acquired mostly in 2020 and 2021. The most recent deal it disclosed was a 178 million riyal stake in Hercules Capital Inc., made in June. The venture capital firm’s shares have risen 17% since the start of July.

Prince Alwaleed, 67, became one of the highest profile Saudi investors after taking stakes in companies such as Citigroup Inc. and Apple Inc. He’s supported Prince Mohammed’s modernization efforts, including giving women the right to drive.

More recently he’s announced the sale of a stake in his Rotana Music label to Warner Music Group Corp., and he raised $2.2 billion by selling part of his stake in the Four Seasons hotel chain to Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment LLC.

Alwaleed is known for long-term investments and is a fan of famed investor Warren Buffett. He once called himself the Oracle of Omaha’s Arabian equivalent.

Read this next: Broke Oligarch Says Sanctioned Billionaires Have No Sway Over Putin

(Updates with details in fifth and sixth paragraphs)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Chipmakers’ Pandemic Boom Turns to Bust as Recession Looms

Ian King
Mon, August 15, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Even in an industry famous for its roller-coaster cycles, chipmakers are bracing for a particularly severe shift in coming months, when a record-setting sales surge is threatening to give way to the worst decline in a decade or more.

The semiconductor market enjoyed a massive run-up in orders during the pandemic, sending sales and stock prices to new highs and triggering a global scramble to find enough supplies. There was hope in some circles that the boom could be sustained for several more years without a painful pullback, but chipmakers are now facing a familiar problem: growing inventory and shrinking demand.

It’s a dilemma as old as the computing age. It takes years to build a chip plant, and they don’t always come online when they’re most needed. In the last few years, the problem was a lack of supply. As recently as this quarter, automakers and some other customers were complaining they still couldn’t get enough electronic components.

But fortunes have turned swiftly for the biggest chipmakers. Companies like Nvidia Corp. are reporting more that 40% annual declines in their core businesses, while Micron Technology Inc. warns that demand is evaporating fast in many areas. This week, Chinese government data showed that output of integrated circuits plunged 17% in July after robust growth in 2021, reflecting supply chain shocks as well as a tapering in demand for lower-end chips from the world’s biggest semiconductor market.

The treachery of the semiconductor cycle was driven home when President Joe Biden signed the $52 billion Chips and Science Act to subsidize domestic production -- on the very day that Micron, the US’s biggest maker of memory chips, told investors demand was fading.

“It’s sort of darkly humorous,” said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon. “The politicians are going to find out how quickly shortages can resolve themselves when the industry turns.”

Personal computer makers, some of the biggest buyers of chips, were the harbinger of darker times. Desktop processor shipments dropped to their lowest level in nearly three decades in the second quarter, according to Mercury Research. Total processor shipments experienced their largest year-over-year falloff since about 1984.

It’s a painful hangover following pandemic lockdowns, when the work-from-home trend spurred demand for PCs and other devices. Chipmakers had been rushing to keep up with a flood of orders, and supply-chain snags made customers even more desperate. Manufacturers of electronic devices were willing to buy chips at whatever price they could.

Now consumers are cutting down on big-ticket purchases, and chip buyers are following suit. That’s created what the industry calls an “inventory correction.” The last such downturn was in 2019, and they don’t usually last long.

But this one is expected to be especially pronounced due to a weakening global economy. If an inventory correction happens at the same time the economy slides into recession, the industry won’t get the speedy rebound it saw after the last slump.

“It’s going to be a bad downturn,” said Gus Richard, an analyst for Northland Securities.

Christopher Danely, a Citigroup Inc. analyst, expects the industry’s drop to be the worst in at least a decade, and possibly two. Every company and every chip category is likely to suffer, he said.

One unusual factor this time is a broad push by governments to subsidize new factories and equipment, from the US and Europe to China and Japan. Companies like Intel Corp. lobbied for passage of the Chips legislation, arguing the US needed to be more competitive with Asian manufacturers. Now they’re poised to start adding new capacity at a time of shaky demand.

There are 24 new construction projects of large-scale plants, known as fabs, getting underway in 2022, according to chip equipment industry association SEMI. That’s well above the average of 20 that’s been tracked by SEMI since 2014. Total spending on equipment will reach $117.5 billion in 2022, up 15% from the previous industry record, which was in in 2021. Next year that spending will increase to $120.8 billion, SEMI predicts.

“It used to be a competition between companies,” Richard said. “Now it’s a competition between countries because of the strategic importance. There’s a race between China and the US.”

The business of manufacturing chips has become increasingly precarious because of the massive upfront costs. Plants with a price tag of up to $20 billion need to be run flat-out 24 hours a day to bring a return in the few years before they become obsolete. The scale required to make that kind of investment has reduced the number of companies with leading-edge technology to fewer than five. And just three, Samsung Electronics Co., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel, account for the majority of production.

Those companies built their dominance by understanding the economics of the industry better than their rivals. They added production lines at just the right time and made their supply chains as efficient as possible.

But the push to build up chip production in the US and Europe, providing an alternative to Asian manufacturing, could disrupt that drive toward efficiency.

The industry is “effectively building duplicate supply chains in the US and Europe,” said Fitch Ratings analyst Jason Pompeii. “This transition will result in short recurring periods of heightened revenue and cash flow volatility, particularly compared with the increasing efficiency the industry has enjoyed over past decades.”

In the immediate term, the risk is “overinvesting in production capacity heading into an economic downturn,” he said.

Chipmakers remain bullish about demand in the long run. Executives still expect the industry to hit $1 trillion in total revenue by the end of the decade. That means their massive factory build-out may well be worth it.

And in the end, no one really knows what will happen, said Bernstein’s Rasgon. That’s the story of the chip industry.

“Everybody is really bad at forecasting demand,” he said. “They’re too bullish, then they’re too bearish.”

(Updates with latest Chinese chip output data in the fourth paragraph)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M IS THERE ANY OTHER KIND 

How the US Toppled the World’s Most Powerful Gold Trader


Eddie Spence, Joe Deaux and Tom Schoenberg
Sun, August 14, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- In December 2018, a man in his early 30s was intercepted on arrival at Fort Lauderdale airport and taken to a room where two FBI agents sat waiting.

The target was scared and already on high alert — one of his associates had recently admitted to crimes he knew he'd also committed. Christian Trunz wasn’t a terrorist or a drug trafficker, but a mid-level trader of precious metals returning from his honeymoon. Crucially: he was also a longstanding employee of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest bullion bank.

The FBI’s airport ambush described by Trunz was a crucial step in the pursuit by US prosecutors of JPMorgan’s precious metals desk, leading up to last week’s climax — the conviction on 13 counts of the man who was once the most powerful figure in the gold market, the desk’s former global head Michael Nowak.

Watched with a mixture of fascination and horror by precious metals traders around the world, the case has shone a light on how JPMorgan’s traders — including Nowak and the bank’s long-time lead gold trader Gregg Smith — for years allegedly manipulated markets by placing bogus orders designed to wrongfoot other market participants, principally algorithmic traders whose high-speed activity became a major source of frustration.

Nowak has become one of the most senior bankers to be convicted in the US since the financial crisis, and faces the prospect of decades in prison, although it could be far less.

Read: JPMorgan Gold Traders Found Guilty After Long Spoofing Trial

Nowak’s lawyers contend Nowak wasn’t a “criminal mastermind” and said they will “continue to vindicate his rights in court.” A lawyer for Smith said during closing arguments last month that his client’s orders were legitimate, and there are other explanations to buy and sell futures contracts at the same time on behalf of customers.

It took three weeks in court for the government to persuade a jury of Nowak and Smith’s guilt. (Jeffrey Ruffo, a salesman who was tried with them, was acquitted.)

But whispers of spoofing had hung over JPMorgan’s trading desk for at least a decade — many years before the FBI first approached Trunz in 2018.

Alex Gerko, the head of an algorithmic trading firm, complained about Smith’s activity in the gold market as early as 2012 to CME Group Inc., which owns the futures exchanges where the US alleged thousands of spoof trades took place. But Smith and Nowak continued working at the bank until 2019, when the US unsealed charges against them.

“The wheels of justice are moving, slowly,” Gerko tweeted last month.

At the Justice Department, the road to JPMorgan began with a decision to begin hunting down traders who made bogus offers to buy and sell commodities that they never intended to execute. The criminal fraud unit hired data consultants to go through billions of lines of trades to spot patterns of market manipulators.

As the vast quantities of data was scrutinized, there were certain traders that stood out. And they worked at JPMorgan.

With the data in hand, investigators went looking for cooperators, which they found in Trunz and his former colleague John Edmonds. Both relatively junior traders pleaded guilty to their own misconduct and agreed to testify against the desk’s boss.

Nowak was arrested in September 2019, sending a shock wave through the metals world, but the Covid pandemic meant it would be another three years until the trial finally took place.

In his testimony, Edmonds, who’d started in an operations role at JPMorgan, described spoofing on the desk as a daily phenomenon and felt obliged to take part because it was part of the normal strategy.

The Justice Department’s move against JPMorgan’s most senior bullion bankers was celebrated in some corners of the gold and silver markets, where investors and bloggers have long accused the bank of a large-scale scheme to manipulate prices lower. Those allegations prompted multiple investigations by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the most recent of which was closed in 2013 after finding no evidence of wrongdoing.

The case against Nowak and Smith made no allegations of a systematic plot to suppress prices, instead arguing that they spoofed markets over very short periods of time, and in both directions, to benefit JPMorgan's most important hedge fund clients.

And while the convictions are a victory for the prosecutors, the jury rejected the government’s most sweeping charges — brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO — that the men were part of a conspiracy and that JPMorgan’s precious metals desk was a criminal enterprise.

At JPMorgan, Edmonds said the practice was referred to as “clicking” rather than spoofing, and the traders never discussed it as being illegal despite the firm’s own compliance policies making it plain. Trunz even spoke of a running joke involving Smith, who would click his mouse so fast to place and cancel orders that his colleagues would urge him to put ice on his fingers.

In 2012, Gerko, who is the founder of quantitative trading firm XTX Markets Ltd., complained to the CME about Smith’s trading in gold futures by rapidly entering and canceling orders. The CME began an investigation, which dragged on for three years before concluding he’d likely been spoofing.

“It took a long time after 2010 to get consistent enforcement,” Gerko said in a tweet, referring to the Dodd-Frank act in which spoofing was defined and made illegal.

After another JPMorgan trader, Michel Simonian, was fired in 2014 for spoofing, Nowak called his traders into his office to ask if they'd been doing the same, according to Edmonds. No one said anything. The incident shocked Edmonds, he said, as Nowak knew it had been going on for years.

During the trial, Nowak appeared largely impassive, his face hidden behind a Covid mask. Industry insiders described him in 2020 as introverted and brainy, and testimony during the trial painted him as a well-liked manager, who became friendly with Trunz while the two did a stint working out of JPMorgan’s London office.

During trial, Trunz was asked whether he liked Nowak, the former trader responded: "I loved him."

However, the relationship became more complicated after Trunz was approached by authorities. When he contemplated making a deal with the government, Nowak told him not to, according to Trunz, who became audibly choked up as he gave the testimony.

Defense lawyers painted Trunz and Edmonds as unreliable — proven liars who were testifying against their clients in order to avoid lengthy prison sentences.

Read: JPMorgan Gold Trader Says Boss Coached Him on Spoofing Lie

Nowak and Smith won’t be sentenced until next year. For comparison, two Deutsche Bank AG traders convicted of spoofing in 2020 were each sentenced to about a year in prison.

Last week’s conviction represents the pinnacle of the US Justice Department’s crackdown on the illegal trading practice known as spoofing. So far, prosecutors have managed to convict ten traders at five different banks.

JPMorgan has already paid $920 million to settle spoofing allegations against it.

“Even though the jury rejected the conspiracy and RICO charges, they will consider this a win,” said Matthew Mazur, an attorney at Dechert LLP who defended one of the Deutsche Bank traders. “This is probably the end of the precious metals sweep that was done, but I do think there will continue to be cases.”

Even after the crackdown, some market participants say spoofing still takes place. Back when commodity futures traded in the pits, brokers had to trade face-to-face. Hiding behind a screen makes it much easier to place and pull orders at will.

“We still see spoofing on a regular basis,” said Eric Zuccarelli, an independent commodities trader who began working on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1986. “But back then if a person spoofed everybody would come over and punch you in the face and the floor committee would come over and fine you for being an asshole.”

Coal Consumption Was On The Rise Even Before The Ukraine War

Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, August 15, 2022 

This article is the fifth in a series on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022. The Review provides a comprehensive picture of supply and demand for major energy sources on a country-level basis. Previous articles covered overall energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, petroleum supply and demand, and global natural gas trends.

Today I delve into the data on coal production and consumption.

Comparing Coal’s Emissions

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel. What is meant by that?

Fossil fuels are primarily composed of carbon and hydrogen. They are hydrocarbons. When hydrocarbons are combusted, the carbon forms carbon dioxide and the hydrogen forms water vapor. Coal contains a higher percentage of carbon than does oil or natural gas. So, when coal is combusted, it generates more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than oil or natural gas will generate.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), combustion of coal emits about 210 pounds of CO2 per million British thermal units (BTU) of energy. In comparison, oil emits about 160 pounds of CO2 per million BTU, and natural gas emits 117 pounds of CO2 per million BTU.

Coal also produces a lot of other harmful emissions when burned in power plants. Historically, coal plants emitted a lot of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. Regulations eventually reined in that problem, but coal-fired power plants still emit pollutants like mercury. They even emit more radioactive elements into the environment than a nuclear power plant. Thus, there have been many regulations passed that have attempted to lower coal’s impact on the environment.

Because of the various pollution issues associated with coal, most developed countries have moved away from coal-fired power. But because coal is cheap, developing countries continue to rely heavily on coal as a source of power. Coal consumption in developing countries is presently the largest global driver of rising carbon dioxide emissions.

2021 Consumption and Production Statistics

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 saw a record 4.2% drop in global coal consumption. Within the 38 countries that comprise the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), coal consumption fell in 2020 by 15.2%.

However, as with oil and natural gas, coal consumption bounced back strongly in 2021, growing by 6.3%. Coal consumption in non-OECD countries rose to a new record, while global coal consumption fell just short of the previous record set in 2014. Non-OECD countries now consume 81.5% of the world’s coal.


Six of the world’s ten largest consumers of coal are in the Asia Pacific region. All but one of last year’s Top 10 consumers saw an increase in coal consumption from 2020. Below were the world’s Top 10 coal consumers in 2021. “Change” refers to the growth or decline from the previous year.

Related: China’s Construction Crisis Weighs On Industrial Metals

Germany, which has been phasing out nuclear power and aggressively pursuing renewables, had the largest percentage increase in coal consumption from the previous year (among the Top 10 consumers).

Coal producers are geographically more diverse than coal consumers. Nevertheless, China dominates the world’s coal consumption and production. Below were the world’s Top 10 coal producers in 2021:


The coal industry in the U.S. has seen both supply and demand steadily declining for 15 years. The dramatic decline in U.S. coal consumption is the primary reason U.S. CO2 emissions have fallen sharply in the past decade. Coal consumption in power plants was displaced by cheaper natural gas and renewables, both of which have a much lower carbon footprint. However, that downward trend reversed direction in 2021, which saw a surge in both coal production and consumption in the U.S.

In the next installment, I will take a closer look at global renewable energy trends.

By Robert Rapier

PHONY ALTERNATIVE TO SOCIALISM

Jamie Dimon defends ‘woke capitalism,’ saying ‘society is worse off if we don’t lift up everybody’

Erin Prater
Mon, August 15, 2022 

Misha Friedman—Getty Images

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon defended a brand of “woke capitalism” that turns words into action, on a Tuesday client call, saying that “society is worse off if we don’t lift up everybody.”

“You can ignore the bad part of society—not hire from them, not drive through parts of town,” said Dimon, as reported by Yahoo! Finance. “I think it is a mistake because our society is worse off if we don’t lift up everybody. It is far more than ‘woke capitalism.’ It is a good thing to lift up our fellow citizens.”

If young people ages 17 to 25 have a 20% unemployment rate, “you can be sure you’re going to have a social problem,” he said. “Jobs bring dignity, household formation. Jobs reduce crime. Everybody should try to help if they can.”

The July unemployment rate for young people ages 16 to 19 was 3.5%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate for ages 20 to 24 was 6.4%.

The term “woke capitalism” was coined by New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat in the mid-2010s. While the term means slightly different things to different people, it generally refers to corporations that signal their support for social issues like same-sex marriage and environmental protection, but perhaps don’t take their advocacy further.



In a 2020 piece in The Atlantic, writer Helen Lewis criticized woke capitalism, saying its “iron law” is “Better to have something you can point to and say, ‘Aren't we progressive?’ than to think about the real problem.”

A good example, according to Lewis: diversity training, which “offers the minimum possible disruption to your power structures. Don’t change the board; just get your existing employees to sit through a seminar.”

“The only question I want to ask big companies who claim to be ‘empowering the female leaders of the future’ is this one: ‘Do you have on-site child care?’” she wrote. “You can have all the summits and power breakfasts you want, but unless you address the real problems holding working parents back, then it’s all window dressing.”

AND THEN HE GOES AND SPOILS IT ALL WITH CAPITALIST DIKTAT

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon rips remote work and Zoom as ‘management by Hollywood Squares’ and says returning to the office will aid diversity

Nicholas Gordon

Mon, August 15, 2022 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon blasted working from home and Zoom as “management by Hollywood Squares,” using the dated TV show reference on a call with the bank’s wealthy clients last week to reiterate his long-held preference that workers return to the office, Yahoo Finance reports.

Dimon argued on the Tuesday call that remote work creates a working environment that’s less honest and more prone to procrastination. “A lot of people at home are texting each other, sometimes saying what a jerk that person is,” said Dimon. (His Hollywood Squares comment referred to the decades-old game show—that’s no longer in production—in which celebrities sat in a three-by-three grid to answer questions from contestants.)

Dimon’s remarks come as the tussle between management and employees on a return to the office heats up and a possible economic slowdown threatens to erode employees’ leverage to stay home.

In the past, Dimon has said that work-from-home is a poor fit for JPMorgan’s employees. Last year, he argued that remote work “doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation."

In a shareholder letter released earlier this year, the bank said that it expected half its employees to return to the office full-time, with an additional 40% working in a hybrid system. JPMorgan is reportedly tracking ID card swipes in order to ensure compliance with the new policy and monitoring the time employees spend on Zoom and email in order to better measure productivity.

On Tuesday, Dimon rolled out a new argument in his battle against working from home: that it damages the U.S. drive for diversity.

Dimon called the office a “rainbow room” and said that workers who stayed home were denying themselves “opportunities to meet other people.” The JPMorgan CEO argued that “if you live in certain parts of our country and go eat out there, it is all white,” meaning remote workers may end up having a more uniform experience than if they traveled into work.

Studies report that minorities, especially Black and Hispanic workers, are teleworking at lower rates than white workers. One April study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 19% of Black and 14% of Hispanic workers engaged in telework, compared with 24% of white workers and 38% of Asian workers. The CDC study argues that the difference stemmed from lower rates of college education among minority populations, as well as overrepresentation of Black and Hispanic workers in jobs that don’t allow for remote work.

A survey from the Society for Human Resource Management last September reported that half of Black office workers wanted to work from home, compared with 39% of white workers and 29% of Hispanic workers.

CEOs, real estate developers, and even city mayors have called for workers to return to the office. Developer Stephen Ross predicted in June that a recession might make “people fear that they might not have a job, [and] that will bring people back to the office.” But workers want to stay home. The Slack-funded Future Forum found in July that only one in five knowledge workers wanted to return to the office, a record low.

Nationally, office occupancy rates are hovering around 43%, according to Kastle Systems, a security company.

Apple Lays Off Recruiters as Part of Its Slowdown in Hiring

Mark Gurman
Mon, August 15, 2022 


(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. laid off many of its contract-based recruiters in the past week, part of a push to rein in the tech giant’s hiring and spending, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

About 100 contract workers were let go in a rare move for the world’s most valuable company, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. The recruiters were responsible for hiring new employees for Apple, and the cuts underscore that a slowdown is underway at the company.

Workers laid off were told the cuts were made due to changes in Apple’s current business needs. Bloomberg first reported last month that the company was decelerating hiring after years of staffing up, joining many tech companies in hitting the brakes. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook confirmed during Apple’s earnings conference call that the company would be more “deliberate” in its spending -- even as it keeps investing in some areas.

“We believe in investing through the downturn,” Cook told analysts. “And so we’ll continue to hire people and invest in areas, but we are being more deliberate in doing so in recognition of the realities of the environment.”

Apple is still retaining recruiters who are full-time employees, and not all of its contractors were fired as part of the move. An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the decision.

The move to lay off workers is unusual for the Cupertino, California-based technology giant, which employs more than 150,000 people. But it’s far from alone in taking such a step. In recent months, Meta Platforms Inc., Tesla Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Oracle Corp. have all eliminated jobs in the face of a tech spending slowdown.

Terminated contractors were told they would receive pay and medical benefits for two weeks. When they were laid off, employee badges were disabled and workers were told they would need to email a list of their belongings if they wanted those items to be returned. Recruiters were let go across many regions, including at Apple’s offices in Texas and Singapore.

Apple previously fired a large group of contract workers in 2019 in Cork, Ireland. At the time, the company had been relying on several hundred contractors to listen to recordings of Siri conversations to help improve the product. Apple let the workers go as part of scaling down the program in response to privacy concerns. The company also fired some contractors while working on the Apple Park campus in 2015.

Like many other companies, Apple employs contract workers for tasks such as technical support and customer service. It also uses contractors for localizing products and improving its Maps service. Contract workers typically receive fewer benefits than full-time workers and have fewer protections.

Minister Wilkinson Releases New Report Showing the Impacts of Climate Change and Necessity of Climate Adaptation in Ontario

Mon, August 15, 2022 

Canada NewsWire

OTTAWA, ON, Aug. 15, 2022

OTTAWA, ON, Aug. 15, 2022 /CNW/ - Across Ontario, Canadians are feeling the impacts of climate change in their communities and on their livelihoods. That is why today, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources, announced the release of the Ontario Chapter of the Canada in a Changing Climate: Regional Perspectives Report to help inform and support adaptation to climate change in Ontario.


According to the report, temperatures are increasing in the province, with the greatest warming observed in Northern Ontario and the largest increases occurring in the winter. With further warming, heat waves are projected to become more frequent. Annual precipitation is projected to increase along with extreme precipitation events, resulting in increased risk of flooding. Lake levels in the Great Lakes have been highly variable, experiencing both record lows and extreme highs. These changes are affecting Ontario's communities, environment and economy.

This new chapter also highlights the wide range of climate impacts that Ontario is facing and how the province is adapting. It reveals that Ontario's infrastructure is vulnerable to climate change and that nature-based solutions help address climate change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Impacts on biodiversity are magnified through the cumulative effects of climate change, habitat loss, urbanization, pollution and other threats. In the Great Lakes Basin, adaptive management is key for addressing climate change impacts, and adaptation measures improve forest health, carbon storage and biodiversity.

Climate change brings both threats and opportunities to Ontario agriculture and food systems, while existing human health inequities will be worsened by climate change. The chapter also concludes that while adaptation is occurring, progress remains limited.

The report is a part of Canada in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action, Canada's National Knowledge Assessment of how and why Canada's climate is changing, the impacts of these changes and how we are adapting. The assessment reports raise awareness and understanding of the key issues facing our country and provide information to support sound adaptation decisions and actions. The Government of Canada is also working with partners in Ontario and across the country on the development of the country's first National Adaptation Strategy, a whole-of-society blueprint for coordinated action to ensure communities and Canadians are prepared for the impacts of climate change.

By ensuring people in Ontario have access to credible, evidence-based information, this resource will enable them to make more informed decisions to prepare for, and respond to, climate change impacts.

A webinar on August 17 will follow the official release of the Ontario Chapter of the Regional Perspectives Report. Hear directly from the authors about how climate change is affecting Ontario and how communities and sectors are increasingly taking action to adapt.

Quotes

"Today's report confirms that Ontario, like every region of Canada, is facing significant climate challenges, from exacerbated health inequities to increasingly at-risk infrastructure. That is why our government is examining the regional effects of our changing climate: to better enable informed decision-making to prepare for, and respond to, climate impacts. With these reports, we are ensuring that Canadians have access to credible, evidence-based information, information that will go on to inform their choices as well as our own as we develop Canada's first National Adaptation Strategy."

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson
Minister of Natural Resources

"Across Ontario, communities are facing challenges from a changing climate. Important evidence-based information, such as in this report, can help communities prepare. We are working with partners to develop Canada's first National Adaptation Strategy. The Strategy will help support whole-of-society action to address and better prepare for the impacts of a changing climate including communities, the natural environment and the economy. We can and we must do both mitigation and adaptation — play both offence and defence — for a complete effort."

The Honourable Steven Guilbeault
Minister of Environment and Climate Change

"Climate change is top of mind for rural communities in Ontario and across Canada. Ontarians are counting on us to make sound decisions based on the credible, evidence-based science of our country's climate experts. The insights from this report will help Ontario's communities be more prepared to take action against the continued effects of climate change and protect Ontario's vulnerable infrastructure, including the Great Lakes."

The Honourable Gudie Hutchings
Minister of Rural Economic Development

"Communities across Canada, including in Ontario, are experiencing more frequent and severe weather events due to climate change. The release of this provincial chapter underlines how important it is for climate change adaptation and emergency management efforts to be implemented together and requires close co-operation across all orders of government, industry and individuals. The Government of Canada is championing these efforts through the development of the National Adaptation Strategy and the delivery of the Emergency Management Strategy for Canada. The evidence from this report will continue to help inform our efforts as we work together to anticipate, mitigate and recover from the impacts of climate change."

The Honourable Bill Blair
President of the Queen's Privy Council and Minister of Emergency Preparedness

"Ontario is a leader in Canada when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and nature-based solutions through programs like the Greenlands Conservation Partnership Program. We've taken meaningful action to prepare for the impacts of climate change by undertaking the first Provincial Climate Change Impact Assessment, using the best available science and data. Results from the multi-sector assessment will help Indigenous communities, municipalities, businesses and local decision-makers make informed choices to adapt to climate change while building a strong economy."

The Honourable David Piccini
Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks

Associated links

Register for the Webinar on August 17
Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues Report
Canada in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action
2030 Emissions Reduction Plan: Clean Air, Strong Economy
Map of Adaptation Actions
Canada's National Adaptation Strategy

SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

Analysis: Iranian nuclear deal limbo may serve interests of both U.S. and Iran


 PHOTO: Illustration shows Atom symbol and Iran flag

Sun, August 14, 2022 
By Arshad Mohammed and Parisa Hafezi

WASHINGTON/DUBAI (Reuters) - Whether or not Tehran and Washington accept a European Union "final" offer to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, neither is likely to declare the pact dead because keeping it alive serves both sides' interests, diplomats, analysts and officials said.

Their reasons, however, are radically different.

For U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, there are no obvious or easy ways to rein in Iran's nuclear program other than the agreement, under which Iran had restrained its atomic program in return for relief from U.S., U.N. and EU economic sanctions.

Using economic pressure to coerce Iran to further limit its atomic program, as Biden's predecessor Donald Trump attempted after abandoning the deal in 2018, will be difficult when countries such as China and India continue to buy Iranian oil.

The rise in oil prices brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's public support for Tehran have thrown Iran economic and political lifelines that have helped to convince Iranian officials that they can afford to wait.

"Both sides are happy to endure the status quo," said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We are in no rush," said a senior Iranian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We are selling our oil, we have reasonable trade with many countries, including neighboring countries, we have our friends like Russia and China that both are at odds with Washington ... our (nuclear) program is advancing. Why should we retreat?"

When Trump reneged on the deal he argued it was too generous to Iran and he reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions designed to choke off Iran's oil exports as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign.

After waiting about a year, Iran began violating the deal's nuclear restrictions, amassing a larger stockpile of enriched uranium, enriching uranium to 60% purity - well above the pact's 3.67% limit - and using increasingly sophisticated centrifuges.

After 16 months of fitful, indirect U.S.-Iranian talks, with the EU shuttling between the parties, a senior EU official on Aug. 8 said they had laid down a "final" offer and expected a response within "very, very few weeks."

AUG. 15 DEADLINE?

Regional diplomats said the EU told the parties it expected an answer on Aug. 15, though that has not been confirmed. There are no signs if Iran intends to comply or to accept the draft EU text. The United States has said it is ready to quickly conclude a deal based on the EU proposals, is studying the text and will respond "as asked."

"The Ukraine war, high oil prices, the rising tension between Washington and China, have changed the political equilibrium. Therefore, time is not of the essence for Iran," said a second senior Iranian official.

After months of saying time was running out, U.S. officials have changed tack, saying they will pursue a deal as long as it is in U.S. national security interests, a formulation with no deadline.

Biden, a Democrat, is sure to be criticized by Republicans if he revives the deal before the Nov. 8 midterm elections in which his party could lose control of both houses of Congress.

"If the Iranians tomorrow came in and said, 'OK, we'll take the deal that's on the table,' we would do it notwithstanding the midterms," said Dennis Ross, a veteran U.S. diplomat now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"It's not like the administration is out there touting this as a great arms control deal. Their position is that it's the least bad of the alternatives that are available," he added.

While Biden has said he would take military action as a last resort to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Washington is loathe to do so given the risk of sparking a wider regional war or of Iran attacking the United States or its allies elsewhere.

Domestic criticism of the administration is likely to be fiercer after last week's indictment of an Iranian man on U.S. charges of plotting to kill former White House national security adviser John Bolton and the knife attack on novelist Salman Rushdie. The writer has lived under an Iranian fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to kill him for his novel "The Satanic Verses," viewed by some as blasphemous.

DANGLING

The lack of better policy options for Washington, and Tehran's view that time is on its side, could leave the deal dangling.

"Both the US and Iran have compelling reasons to keep the prospect of a deal alive, even though neither appears willing to make the concessions that would actually facilitate its revival," said Eurasia Group analyst Henry Rome.

"It is unclear whether Iranian leaders have decided not to revive the deal or have not made a definitive decision, but either way, continuing this limbo period likely serves their interests," Rome said.

"The fact that the West has long threatened that time was running short has likely undermined its credibility in insisting that the deal on the table is final and non-negotiable," he said.

(Reporting By Parisa Hafezi in Dubai and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

HINDUTVA IS NOT HINDUISM
Op-Ed: As a Hindu, I can't stay silent about injustices in India — committed in the name of our faith

Akhila L. Ananth
Mon, August 15, 2022 

Students protest against a Modi-backed citizenship law in New Delhi, India, in December 2019. 

(Altaf Qadri / Associated Press)

On Monday, India marks 75 years since its independence from British rule. Growing up in Orange County, I was taught that observing Hindu religious traditions made me a proud Indian. My family is Brahmin, the upper caste of Hinduism’s ancient hierarchy. I learned South Indian classical dance, attended Hindu Sunday school and spent summers at my grandparents’ home in Bengaluru, in southern India.

At the same time, my upbringing was relatively progressive. My grandfather had been a civil servant in India and taught me how corrupt governments could become. During the years he lived with us in America, I would come home from high school to newspaper clippings about global politics that he shared with me. In 2000, when I voted for Ralph Nader for president, he told me he would have too. And in 2014, he shared my grief at the election of Narendra Modi as India’s prime minister. My grandfather believed that equality and plurality were the riches of a society, and Modi represented the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ultra-conservative right-wing party supported by Hindus in India and abroad.

These two sides of my identity bred a contradiction. At community gatherings in California, I avoided politics like everyone else and smiled politely. I enjoyed being anonymous in a sea of Indian faces. Yet I was also involved in progressive causes with a multiracial group of activists and debated a lot with my family about racism, classism, misogyny and homophobia in the U.S.

It’s become harder to hold on to that contradiction. I want all the aunties, uncles and young people I’ve been raised around to know that I can’t stay silent about what is happening in the name of our faith in India. How can I speak out about injustice in the U.S. while ignoring India?

Modi has waged a political war against poor people, farmers, Indigenous and caste-oppressed groups and Muslims, and because of that, Hindu nationalists now feel free to brutalize those communities. In 2019, he abrogated the semi-sovereign status of Kashmir, the territory trapped between Indian and Pakistani military rule. Thousands of people protested when Modi’s government approved a bill that set religion as a condition for citizenship by only granting citizenship to non-Muslims fleeing neighboring countries.

In March, a school district in the southern state of Karnataka — where my family’s roots are — banned students from wearing hijab. Every day reports pile up on social media of Muslims being murdered or sexually assaulted in India at the hands of Hindu nationalists. Meanwhile, journalists critical of Modi have been silenced, incarcerated and harassed. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and other non-governmental organizations have had to halt or limit operations in India.

Modi’s election showed me what was right below those polite smiles at community events I attended. At best, elders and even my parents debated me, arguing that Brahmins had also faced discrimination because of India’s reservations system, a version of affirmative action. One auntie — a term of respect we use for older women in our community, even if they’re not related to us — advised me, with love, that India was a lost cause and that I should focus my energy on the U.S. On social media, I’ve been attacked for speaking out at all.

When I was last in India in December 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, I got into several tearful debates with cousins repeating horrible stereotypes about Muslims. But conservatism in India is also culturally and financially supported by Indian communities here in the U.S. In November 2019, then-President Trump welcomed Modi to a Houston stadium with 50,000 paying Indian Americans.

We in the diaspora have a role to play against Hindu fundamentalism. The California State University system, where I work, now includes caste as a protected category, which means that students, staff or faculty can report caste-based discrimination they face on campuses to university administrators for internal investigations. That was a result of years of activism from Dalit students, who are from historically oppressed communities of the caste system, and their supporters. Just like the millions of activists in India, there is also a growing movement of progressive South Asian Americans, including Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Nepalis in the U.S. forming coalitions across religious and ethnic lines to advocate for better living conditions in the U.S. and to resist conservative policies in our homelands.

Last month, a group of us walked through the Lotus Festival honoring India at Echo Park with signs protesting Modi’s rule. We were met with many curious and supportive Angelenos, but also with Hindu conservatives, invited guests of the festival, aggressively calling us liars. One Indian woman lunged toward us before her friend pulled her back. This time, I did not smile politely. I yelled back.

On the 75th anniversary of India’s independence from Britain, I am as inspired by my progressive South Asian community as I am by the words of India’s constitution. The preamble, written by B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit scholar and freedom fighter, proclaims that the people of India will create a secular democratic republic that secures for all its citizens: “JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity.” These are the ideals that I’ll be celebrating and that I’ll continue building toward, even if they feel out of reach right now.

Akhila L. Ananth is an associate professor of criminal justice at Cal State Los Angeles.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Brazil's Lula has 12% lead over Bolsonaro, would win run-off by 16%, says poll

Brazil's former president and presidential frontrunner 

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gestures during campaign event in Sao Paulo


Mon, August 15, 2022 
By Peter Frontini and Anthony Boadle

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has a 12-percentage-point lead over far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of the October election, according to a new poll published on Monday.

The survey by IPEC, formerly known as IBOPE, showed Lula with 44% of voter support against 32% for Bolsonaro in the first round of the election schedule for Oct. 2.

In an expected run-off between the two men on Oct. 30, should no candidate win 50% plus one of the valid votes, Lula would get elected by 51% of the votes versus 35% for Bolsonaro, a 16-point gap, the poll showed.

That advantage for the leftist former president is mirrored by other polls, which have shown Brazil's most polarized presidential race in decades narrowing in recent weeks.

Lula's lead has fallen from 26% in December to 18% in July, according to Datafolha, another major polling firm, but the leftist leader still had a 20% lead over Bolsonaro if the two men face off in a run-off.

Bolsonaro has increased spending on welfare for poor Brazilians, which may be improving his numbers. He has also pressed state-controlled oil company Petrobras to lower the price of fuel, a big factor in pushing up inflation.

Pollster Quaest, in telephone surveys, found Bolsonaro is now statistically tied with Lula in Sao Paulo, the country's largest electoral college, and has narrowed his rival's lead in Minas Gerais, the state with second largest number of voters.

But another poll commissioned by investment bank BTG released on Monday said Bolsonaro had lost ground again and dropped 4 percentage points to his rival who is leading by 11 points. Lula's advantage also grew for an expected run-off to 15 points from 12 in the previous BTG/FSB poll.

The IPEC poll said Bolsonaro's approval rating is at 29%, compared to just 19% in December, while the number of voters who see his government as bad or terrible has dropped to 43% from 55% in the previous survey.

Still, 57% of Brazilians disapprove of the way Bolsonaro, a former army captain and right-wing firebrand, governs the country, while only 37% approve, according to IPEC.

It was IPEC's first national poll of voter intentions and interviewed 2,000 people in person between August 12-14. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points up or down.

(Reporting by Peter Frontini in Sao Paulo and Anthony Boadle in Brasilia; Editing by Sam Holmes)