Mexico City warrant for opposition legislator draws anger

By Associated Press
December 8, 2022

MEXICO CITY — Mexico City prosecutors announced Thursday they have issued an arrest warrant for the top opposition legislator in the city’s assembly, drawing cries of political persecution.

The issue is a sensitive one for Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been unable to jail anyone for the 2021 collapse of a city subway line that killed 26 people.

Instead, the city’s prosecutors announced Thursday they are seeking to arrest city legislator Christian Von Roehrich for his alleged role in a scandal in which builders were allowed to construct extra floors in apartment buildings. None of the extra floors collapsed.

Von Roehrich belongs to the conservative opposition National Action Party. Prosecutors charged him with illegal use of authority and criminal conspiracy. The alleged scheme purportedly involved bribes for allowing developers to violate zoning rules and put extra floors on apartment buildings

Sheinbaum is seen as the most likely 2024 presidential candidate for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party.

Andrés Atayde, the leader of the National Action Party in Mexico City, wrote in his Twitter account that “we warned you: Morena doesn’t fight corruption, it persecutes the opposition.”

The energetic prosecution in the extra-floors scandal contrasts with the lenient attitude authorities have shown to about 10 former officials implicated in the 2021 collapse of an elevated subway line that killed 26 people.

Investigations showed that construction defects played a key role in the collapse. The line was built under another prominent member of López Obrador’s party, Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, in the early 2000s when he was mayor.

Those implicated have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, causing damages and injuries. But those charges are considered less serious than the ones against Von Roehrich, and the former officials have remained free while facing trial.

 

Japanese billionaire Maezawa picks K-pop star T.O.P, DJ Steve Aoki to join SpaceX moon trip

DECEMBER 08, 2022

Indian actor Dev Joshi (second from right) was also among the picks for the group, comprised largely of artists and photographers.

dearmoon.earth

TOKYO, Dec 9 - Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on Friday revealed that K-pop star TOP and DJ Steve Aoki will be among the eight crew members he plans to take on a trip around the moon next year, hitching a ride on one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets.

Maezawa bought every seat on the maiden lunar voyage, which has been in the works since 2018 and would follow his trip on a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 12-day stint last year.

The picks were announced by Maezawa on Twitter and at a website for what he dubbed the #dearMoon Project.

The fashion tycoon and his crew would become the first passengers on the SpaceX flyby of the moon as commercial firms, including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, usher in a new age of space travel for wealthy clients.

Like fellow billionaire Musk, Maezawa has a flair for promotion and an infatuation with Twitter -- he has boasted to holding the Guinness world record for the most retweeted post, when he offered a cash prize of 1 million yen ($7300) to 100 winners for retweeting it.

Maezawa used the micro-blogging site to recruit eight crew members from around the world to join him on the moon trip, saying 1 million people had applied.

TOP, the stage name of Choi Seung Hyun who broke out with the K-pop group Big Bang, is among the higher profile members selected, along with Aoki, a Japanese American musician and DJ whose father founded the Benihana restaurant chain.

Indian actor Dev Joshi was also among the picks for the group, comprised largely of artists and photographers. US Olympic snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington and Japanese dancer Miyu were named as backup crew members.

Maezawa, 47, flagged an update to the lunar expedition on Monday, tweeting he'd held an online meeting with Musk and was readying a "big announcement about space."

Maezawa made his fortune founding the online fashion retailer Zozo Inc (3092.T), in which Softbank Group Corp's (9984.T) internet business is now the top shareholder.

Source: Reuters

How EU-made shotgun cartridges ended up being used to repress protests in Iran

Photographs sent to the FRANCE 24 Observers team in October and November 2022 show shotgun cartridges recovered from protests in Iran. The cartridges bear the logos of Cheddite, a Franco-Italian ammunition manufacturer. © Observers

Text by:Derek Thomson|Alijani Ershad


Issued on: 25/11/2022 - 

An investigation by the FRANCE 24 Observers team has found evidence that shotgun cartridges manufactured by French-Italian manufacturer Cheddite have been used in the repression of protests in Iran. Shotgun cartridges using Cheddite components have been widely used for hunting purposes in Iran since at least 2011, an apparent violation of EU sanctions that went into place that year.

In its investigation, the FRANCE 24 Observers team asked Iranians to send photographs of spent ammunition recovered from protests repressed by Iran’s security forces since the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16. The team analysed more than 100 photos and videos showing tear gas canisters, rifle bullets, paintball projectiles and cartridges from shotguns, which have been widely used by Iran’s security forces. While most of the shotgun shells photographed were made in Iran, 13 shells recovered from eight different Iranian cities bore Cheddite logos. 

Cheddite-branded shotgun shells have been widely used by Iranian hunters for years. A member of Iran’s security forces told the FRANCE 24 Observers that his unit is sometimes issued with hunting cartridges. 

>> Read more on The Observers: How Iran’s security forces are shooting to kill with ‘non-combat’ shotgun shells

Cheddite has factories in Italy and France, with headquarters in Livorno, Italy and Bourg-lès-Valence, France. The company claims to be the world’s largest maker of empty shotgun cartridges and firing caps, producing more than a billion empty cartridges every year. The company manufactures empty cartridges with plastic casings and metal bases that contain a spark-producing primer, and sells them to other manufacturers who fill the cartridges with explosive powder and pellets or other projectiles.

Judge orders Guatemalan newspaper chief to stand trial

A judge has ruled that the director of a Guatemalan investigative newspaper will stand trial on charges of money laundering, influence peddling and blackmail

ByThe Associated Press

December 8, 2022, 

FILE - Award-winning journalist Jose Ruben Zamora, who was arrested the day before, stands inside a cell after a court hearing, in Guatemala City, Saturday, July 30, 2022. The prominent Guatemalan investigative newspaper “El Periodico” announced o...

The Associated Press

GUATEMALA CITY -- The director of a Guatemalan investigative newspaper will stand trial on charges of money laundering, influence peddling and blackmail, a judge ruled Thursday.

José Rubén Zamora of El Periodico has been held for four months amid criticism that his arrest was politically motivated by an administration interested in silencing critical journalists.

Prosecutors accuse Zamora of asking a friend to deposit a $38,000 donation to hide the source of the funds. Zamora has said the money from a donor who wished to remain anonymous was to keep the newspaper running during a financial crisis after the government pulled its advertising.

Zamora’s family members have said various business people had been harassed and pressured to stop buying advertising in the newspaper. El Periodico gained a reputation for hard-hitting investigations into government corruption, including the administration of President Alejandro Giammattei.

El Periodico was forced to stop publishing a printed edition Nov. 30 due to its financial difficulties.

Before Thursday’s hearing, El Periodico’s financial director, Flora Silva, pleaded guilty to money laundering and was sentenced to six years in prison with three years commuted for admitting wrongdoing.

During a recess, Zamora told reporters, “My best scenario is to get out (of prison) Jan. 14, 2024, when Giammattei leaves the presidency. I have patience and the truth on my side.”

The United States and international human rights groups have been critical of the deterioration of judicial independence in Guatemala. More than 30 judges, prosecutors and other members of the legal system have fled into exile to avoid prosecutions.

UK

Editorial:

The Mone scandal underlines the importance of NHS workers' battle over pay, investment – and public ownership

Baroness Michelle Mone in the House of Lords in June 2017

LABOUR will feel they have PM Rishi Sunak on the ropes over his delayed-reaction decision to withdraw the Tory whip from Baroness Mone.

The Conservatives may have hoped they had moved on from Covid after ousting Boris Johnson — but the wounds still fester and even had Sunak acted faster he could not stop this scandal running.

Baroness Mone denounces a “witch hunt” against her, denying she benefited to the tune of millions from contracts awarded to a company she recommended (PPE Medpro). Her decision to take a “leave of absence” from the House of Lords is supposedly to clear her name.

Sunak’s problem is that the Mone case is neither isolated nor surprising.

It comes after former health secretary Matt Hancock’s self-serving serialisation of his unconvincing pandemic memoirs has returned attention to the government’s awful conduct during the crisis.

The disgraced minister prompted outrage by seeking to evade blame for spreading Covid through care homes, though this was a direct consequence of his decision to release NHS patients into care without testing them for the virus.

But the Mone case will remind people of other gripes about Hancock — the dodgy allocation of health contracts, including one awarded to his pub landlord and another to a firm run by his sister in which he had a 20 per cent stake.

It highlights the huge sums of public money squandered on “PPE that was either unusable, overpriced or undelivered,” in Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner’s words — with reports emerging in 2020 that PPE Medpro supplied over £120 million of materials that were never used.

The fact that Hancock, like Mone, no longer holds the Tory whip hardly matters.

The entire approach to PPE procurement stank of sleaze: government pleas now that they were forced to cut corners to obtain protective equipment in a hurry only shunts the problem back to the cause of the shortages.

That was the decision to allow stocks to run low or expire despite the findings of its own Exercise Cygnus drill that PPE shortages would be among the biggest problems when a pandemic hit.

A decision linked to austerity spending cuts that left the NHS ill-equipped to handle an epidemic, and one taken on the watch of another former health secretary — the current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who is now seeking to impose another round of crippling cuts.

This is not a good story for the Tories. It underlines the betrayal of front-line healthcare workers by ministers who provided inadequate protective gear and diverted huge sums of public money to enrich their friends in the process.

It does so just as many nurses and ambulance workers are readying to strike over a significant real-terms pay cut imposed by many of the same ministers who clapped them as heroes back then — not least Sunak himself.

This will reinforce health workers’ determination to secure pay justice and increase already high public sympathy with their action.

But we should also insist that the deeper lessons are addressed.

The orgy of profiteering and waste that accompanied health contracts was an inevitable consequence of the privatisation of NHS Supply Chain.

Yet Labour is not pointing to the role of privatisation and outsourcing in undermining the NHS, and Keir Starmer even claims that private provision has improved public services.

The fragile state of the NHS when Covid struck was down to years of underfunding in the name of austerity — yet Labour is accepting Tory calculations that more rounds of cuts are needed and refuses to back health workers’ pay demands.

A few theatrical denunciations of Tory sleaze won’t cut it. The whole left needs to unite around a better deal for our health service — proper pay, proper investment and an end to private-sector infestation.

These demands will be made at solidarity and strike rallies. But every Labour politician should be forced to address them too.

MORNINGSTAR

US lawmakers slam Washington Commanders, team’s owner, NFL over toxic work culture

‘Our report tells the story of a team rife with sexual harassment and misconduct,’ says US House Oversight Committee

Darren Christopher Lyn |09.12.2022


HOUSTON, US

The US House of Representatives Oversight Committee released a scathing report Thursday showing a toxic work culture of sexual harassment, bullying and intimidation by the Washington Commanders football team and owner Daniel Snyder.

“Our report tells the story of a team rife with sexual harassment and misconduct, a billionaire owner intent on deflecting blame, and an influential organization that chose to cover this up rather than seek accountability and stand up for employees," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The report also said that Snyder "permitted and participated in the workplace misconduct and engaged in tactics used to intimidate, surveil and pay off victims." It also said the National Football League (NFL) "aligned its legal interests with the Commanders, failed to curtail these abusive tactics, and buried the investigation’s findings."

Attorneys for the more than 40 former Washington Commanders' employees released a statement regarding the report.

“Today, after a lengthy and wide-ranging investigation, the Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a comprehensive report that definitively details not only the extensive sexual harassment that occurred, but also owner Dan Snyder’s involvement in that sexual harassment and his efforts to obstruct the various investigations into that scandal," said Lisa Banks and Debra Katz on behalf of their clients.

The Commanders also released a statement about the findings.

“Today’s report does not advance public knowledge of the Washington Commanders workplace in any way. The team is proud of the progress it has made in recent years in establishing a welcoming and inclusive workplace, and it looks forward to future success, both on and off the field," said team attorneys John Brownlee and Stuart Nash.

As a result of the House investigation, evidence of potential financial wrongdoings was uncovered, leading Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to file two civil lawsuits against Snyder and his team.

One alleges that the team and the NFL knowingly deceived D.C. consumers. The other centers around an alleged scheme to "cheat District ticket holders out of their deposits for season tickets."

There is no clear indication as to how and when those lawsuits will be resolved.

Snyder has hired a bank to "explore potential transactions" involving the Commanders – a signal that he might be willing to sell all or part of the team.

Portugal euthanasia: New legislation expected to approve assisted suicide

PublishedShare

IMAGE SOURCE,AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Polls suggest around half of Portugal is in favour of allowing medically 

assisted suicide, but the Catholic church is strongly opposed

By Alison Roberts

BBC News, Lisbon

Portugal's parliament is expected to approve legislation on Friday that will allow medically assisted suicide in certain limited circumstances.

It will be permitted for adults only if the wish is "current and reiterated, serious, free and informed".

The person must be "in a situation of great intensity suffering, with definitive injury of extreme gravity or serious and incurable disease".

The measure has parallels in only a handful of countries worldwide.

The final version was approved in committee on Wednesday, following a fraught week that saw proceedings delayed after the Socialist politician steering the bill provided changes to members just hours before they were due to vote.

There was then a last-ditch call by the main opposition for a referendum on the issue.

Opinion polls point to roughly half of voters in this overwhelmingly Catholic country being in favour of allowing medically assisted suicide, which the Church strongly opposes.

But the call by the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) to suspend the legislative process and hold a referendum was rejected, paving the way for Friday's final reading.

Proposals to allow medically assisted suicide were first approved in 2020, prompting international headlines about how Portugal was set to become only Europe's fourth country to allow euthanasia, as it is commonly known.

However, Portugal's conservative President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, queried the legality of parts of the legislation, sending it to the Constitutional Court. It upheld some of his concerns regarding imprecise language, but not others.

The same parliament then reshaped the bill to meet the objections. But after it was sent to the president in November last year to be enacted, he again blocked it, this time not involving the court but exercising his "political veto" on the grounds that clauses describing terminal conditions were contradictory and needed clarification.

The process was held up further when the president also vetoed an amended bill and then dissolved parliament and called an early general election. It meant that the legislative process for euthanasia would have to start again from scratch, but the election also handed the Socialist Prime Minister, António Costa, a majority for the first time.

With the new government strongly supportive of the principle of medically assisted suicide, work soon began on a new bill, very similar to the last - although requirements were added for a minimum period of two months from when a request is made and a psychological assessment of the person making it.

Since many opposition members also back the reform, it is likely to pass easily. In theory, since this is a new bill, the president could again wield his veto, but that is seen as unlikely.

Under English law euthanasia is illegal and is considered manslaughter or murder.

It is fully legal in three European countries: Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. But assisted death and passive euthanasia - of various types - are legal in many more European countries.

 

The Jobs ‘Boom’ Isn’t So Hot When We Remember Nearly Six Million Men Are Missing From The Workforce – OpEd

NO MENTION OF WOMEN, NO BREAK DOWN BY RACE, OF COURSE THAT WOULD BE TOO 'WOKE' FOR THIS RIGHT WING LIBERTARIAN SITE

 

December 9, 2022  

By MISES

By Ryan McMaken*

Last week, the employment news was all about how payrolls increased by 269,000 jobs and blew past expectations. Yet, when we looked at the actual number of employed persons, it turned out that the number of employed people has gone down in recent months. At 158.4 million, total employment is still nearly 400,000 workers below where it was before the Covid Panic of 2020.

Those who support the everything-is-great narrative have responded to the unimpressive employed-workers numbers by dismissing them as a result of workers retiring and other demographic changes.  These explanations, however, require that we ignore the fact that millions of men age 25-54—that is, men of working age—have removed themselves from the workforce. When so many men—men who would have been in the workforce 20 or 30  years ago—aren’t even trying to get a job, this lowers the unemployment rate and makes total jobs numbers look more impressive. 

In fact, as of September of this year, there appears to be nearly a six-million-man gap between the number of men in the prime-age group—age 25-54—and the number of prime-age men actually in the workforce. Depending on why they’re out of the workforce, that is potentially some very bad news for both the economy and for society overall. 

How Many Men Are Out of the Work Force?

Prime-age male workforce participation rose year-over-year in November, rising to 88.4 percent above last November’s estimate of 88.2 percent. Workforce participation has been climbing out of a hole since the rate hit an all-time low of 86.4 percent during April 2020. 

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Population Survey).

The larger trend in workforce participation for prime-age men, however, has been one of decline for decades. During the 1950s and into the early 60s, prime-age workforce participation for men was nearly 98 percent. That began to fall throughout the 60s, and by 1980, it was around 94 percent. The trend didn’t end there, however, and even during the construction boom of the housing-bubble years, participation never rose above 91.4 percent. The participation rate has never risen above 90 percent since 2009.

What does this mean in total numbers of prime-age males? If we look at the difference between total prime-age men, and the total number of them in the work force, we find that the gap as of November was about 7,040,000 men.

Source: OECD: “Working Age Population, Age 25-54”;   Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Population Survey).

The workforce measure is of civilian workers, however, so if we account for approximately one million active-duty males, that leaves us with about 6 million men out of the work force. But what about stay-at-home dads? Many of these dads have at least part-time jobs, and are thus still in the work force. According to Census data, however, the number of stay-at-home dads who are also “out of the workforce” numbers approximately 200,000. 

So, if we shrink that gap by the men in the military and by the stay-at-home dads who don’t earn wages, we are left with about 5.8 million men who are spending their days doing something other than working for (legal) wages or parenting children.

So, how are these men surviving without income? According to research by Ariel Binder and John Bound, most of these men are low-income, but receive income from parents, spouses, and girlfriends. Among men not in the work force, this cohabitants’ income “accounts for the largest share of income” in the households where these men reside. Many of these men elect not to work because the opportunity cost of not working is relatively low. As Alan Kreuger has noted, the decline in workforce participation has been especially steep among those with lower earning potential such as those with a high school degree or less.  Many men in this category also report poor health and that they take pain medication daily. This also suggests high incidence of opioid addiction among men not in the work force. Few younger men who have left the workforce are eligible for government disability benefits. Among older men, however, disability benefits supplement income from other household members. 

What If These Men Rejoined the Work Force? 

Having a few million men leave the workforce drives down the unemployment rate. What would the employment picture look like if all these men were to suddenly join the workforce by looking for work?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a gap of four million between job openings—10 million—and total unemployed workers—6 million. If all the current job openings were magically filled by current unemployed workers, that would still leave 2 million unemployed workers. Now, let’s add back into the work force those 5.8 million males who are aren’t in the work force at all. We’d then have a situation in which all job openings were filled and we still would have 7.8 million unemployed workers. The unemployment rate would increase to 4.7 percent, or the highest rate since September 2021. 

But that’s not a very probable scenario. While many of the six million unemployed workers are only in transition, many others are unemployed because their industries are cutting jobs, or because the workers generally lack the proper skills or education. When it comes to the men who have left the work force entirely, the picture is more bleak. As we’ve seen, a sizable portion of men who have left the work force have likely done so for reasons that make them something other than ideal job candidates. If they were to begin looking for work, the more likely scenario is one in which the currently unemployed 6 million workers would balloon up to over 10 million. This would drive the unemployment rate up over 6 percent while also softening upward pressure on wages. 

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Household Employment Survey;  JOLTS Survey; US Census; Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Population Survey).

Once layoffs start to accelerate—as many indicators suggest will happen in 2023—the situation will only become worse with the unemployment rate heading up even higher. 

If one were to go only on the headlines we get from the mainstream business press, though, it does seem like there’s nary a potential worker to be found out there anywhere. The truth is less pleasant as millions of prime-age men aren’t working, looking for work, or caring for children. That phenomenon is very good for making the official unemployment rate seem low, but it also lowers the economy’s overall productivity while reducing savings. Even worse are the sociological effects of millions of men sitting at home living off of government disability checks or the toil of relatives, girlfriends and spouses.

About the author: Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute