Leaked internal documents show Amazon will likely continue to slow growth next year amidst cost-cutting and anticipation of a severe economic downturn


Amazon's executives are preparing for an uncertain economy by cutting costs and increasing profit margins

.Eduardo Munoz Avarez/AP

Eugene Kim
Thu, December 22, 2022 at 10:55 AM MST·2 min read


Amazon's economists expect the company's growth to slow as cost cuts continue.


They said Amazon's growth and profitability have historically been "negatively correlated."


The forecast was part of an internal 12-page macroeconomic analysis created in November.

Amazon is cutting costs across the board in anticipation of a severe economic downturn.

SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY; AUSTERITY CREATES THE DOWNTURN

That likely means Amazon's revenue growth will also slow down, according to an internal macroeconomic report obtained by Insider.

The report, put together by Amazon's economic, finance, and science teams, is part of the company's internal research into the broader macroeconomic landscape. The 12-page study touched on topics of a recession possibility, inflation forecast, and their impact on Amazon's overall business, as Insider previously reported.

The November report indicated the company is now cutting costs to focus on profitability and sales will grow at a slower pace than before.

"Acceleration in business growth is associated with profit margin deceleration, and vice versa. There is a clear tradeoff between the interplay of profit seeking and growth, rendering it difficult to achieve both objectives simultaneously," the report said.

"As our pendulum swerves to cut costs in pursuit of higher profit margins, this may undermine our ability to grow at a faster pace in the near — or mid-term," it added.

The report also showed Amazon's economists put the odds of the US economy going into a recession in the next six months at 30%, far lower than other estimates that all but guaranteed a recession next year.

In an email to Insider, Amazon's spokesperson said the company's leadership team disagreed with its own economists.

"The document in question does not reflect the company's position on the economy and where it's headed. Our CFO Brian Olsavsky shared our thinking on our most recent earnings call, and our CEO shared his thoughts in a Dec. 6 interview at the Dealbook event. This document simply reflects the thoughts of some of our economists," the spokesperson said.

During Amazon's most recent earnings call in October, CFO Brian Olsavsky painted a more dire picture and said the company is tightening its belt and pausing hiring due to the "uncertain economy."

"The continuing impacts of broad-scale inflation, heightened fuel prices and rising energy costs have impacted our sales growth as consumers assess their purchasing power and organizations of all sizes evaluate their technology and advertising spend," Olsavsky added during the call.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Indian weapons buyer approves $10B fund to equip military


TAUSEEF MUSTAFA

Vivek Raghuvanshi
Fri, December 23, 2022 

NEW DELHI — India’s weapons buyer on Thursday approved a 843.28 billion rupees ($10.18 billion) budget for the acquisition of major weapons and platforms, most of which the government will spend locally in a bid to bolster the domestic defense manufacturing sector.

The Defence Ministry said in a statement that its Defence Acquisition Council backed the so-called acceptance of necessity proposal, which will see about 97.4% of the funds used to procure indigenous materiel. That type of proposal is the first stage for buying arms, per government regulations.

“This unprecedented initiative will not only modernise the armed forces but also provide a substantial boost to the defence industry to achieve the goal of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ or self-reliant India,” the ministry said.

The government is now expected to issue fresh tenders, followed by the selection of bidders, field trials of prototypes and existing systems, and ultimately the awarding of a contract. The induction of new arms would begin after 2030.

Under this latest budget, India is seeking light tanks, mounted gun systems, ballistic helmets for infantry troops and so-called futuristic infantry combat vehicles, the ministry said. The Army estimates it needs a total of 1,750 futuristic infantry combat vehicles, 350 light tanks and about 800 mounted gun systems.

No local company in India has ever built tanks, futuristic infantry combat vehicles, or 155mm/52-caliber mounted gun systems with fully indigenous technology.

The Indian Air Force is seeking air-to-ground next-generation anti-radiation missiles, long-range guided bombs, range-augmentation kits for conventional bombs, and advanced surveillance systems.

The Defence Acquisition Council also granted approval for new naval programs for anti-ship missiles, underwater autonomous vehicles and multipurpose vessels.

Similarly, the agency approved the procurement of an unspecified quantity of fully indigenous next-generation offshore patrol vessels for the Coast Guard.

In the 2021-2022 financial year, India bought 702. 21 billion rupees worth of locally made armaments from domestic defense contractors. During the 2022-2023 financial year, India has spent about 845.98 billion rupees on locally sourced materiel.

Japan Begins Defense Upgrade With 26% Spending Increase for 2023


Isabel Reynolds
Fri, December 23, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Japan will hike its defense spending by more than a quarter in 2023 to ¥6.82 trillion ($51.4 billion) as it begins a five-year program to toughen its security posture amid rising threats from China, North Korea and Russia.

The plans include acquiring missiles capable of striking neighboring countries, and the development of a new jet fighter with the UK and Italy. Japan will also stockpile ammunition, and bolster its Self-Defense Forces’ ability to quickly deploy troops and equipment to southwestern islands, where tensions with China are high.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s cabinet approved the budget plan Friday after the government announced the security overhaul last week — abandoning a decades-old cap on defense spending of 1% of gross domestic product after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spooked the public. The US welcomed the plans, but China and North Korea protested, while South Korea urged transparency.

Kishida’s spending plans also triggered a fight within his ruling Liberal Democratic Party over how to fund the expanded defense budget. While he vowed not to issue more bonds, construction bonds would be used to fund some purchases of ships and submarines, the Asahi newspaper reported Thursday without saying where it got the information.

The slump in the yen against the dollar over recent months means Japan’s cash won’t go as far when purchasing equipment from overseas. The ministry plans to bolster domestic capacity to produce ammunition and stockpile longer-range missiles. It will also seek to promote sales of domestically made equipment abroad.

Funds will also be earmarked for research and development of uncrewed aerial and underwater vehicles.

Japan’s shopping list includes more than ¥200 billion to acquire Raytheon Technologies Corp’s Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be fired from ships, and about another ¥50 billion for air-to-surface missiles from Lockheed Martin Corp. and Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, according to documents provided by the Defense Ministry.

The following are some of the other items included in the budget:

¥2 trillion for maintenance of equipment, almost double the previous year’s figure


About ¥1 trillion for ships and planes to be used to quickly deploy troops to other parts of the country


¥828 billion for ammunition, about 3.3 times the amount spent the previous year


¥269 billion to improve working conditions for SDF personnel


¥250 billion to purchase 16 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets


¥100 billion for joint development of the next-generation fighter with the UK and Italy


¥58.5 billion for research into hypersonic missiles

Tomahawks part of Japan's record defense spending next year




 Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attends a news conference at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, on Dec. 16, 2022. Japan's defense spending will jump 20% to a record 6.8 trillion yen ($55 billion) next year as the country prepares to deploy U.S.-made Tomahawks and other long-range cruise missiles that can hit targets in China or North Korea under a more offensive security strategy. 

(David Mareuil/Pool Photo via AP, File)


MARI YAMAGUCHI
Fri, December 23, 2022 

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's defense spending will jump 20% to a record 6.8 trillion yen ($55 billion) next year as the country prepares to deploy U.S.-made Tomahawks and other long-range cruise missiles that can hit targets in China or North Korea under a more offensive security strategy.

The planned purchase of Tomahawks at 211.3 billion yen ($1.6 billion) is a centerpiece of Japan's 2023 budget plan approved Friday by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Cabinet and shows his government's determination to rapidly arm itself with more strike capability under the new strategy.

Additionally, Japan will pay the United States 110 billion yen ($830 million) for equipment and software needed to launch Tomahawks, as well as fees for the technology transfer and staff training in the coming year, defense officials said.

The hefty budget plan, pending parliamentary approval, is the first installment of a five-year, 43-trillion-yen ($325-billion) military spending plan under the new defense buildup plan also announced last week. The new spending target follows the NATO standard and will eventually push Japan’s annual budget to about 10 trillion yen ($73 billion), the world’s third biggest after the United States and China.

The budget plan comes a week after Kishida's government announced Japan's new National Security Strategy, stating its determination to possess controversial “counterstrike capability” to preempt enemy attacks and nearly double its spending within the next five years to protect itself from growing risks from China, North Korea and Russia and escalating fear of a Taiwan emergency.

The strategy is a historic change from Japan’s exclusively self-defense policy since the end of World War II. China, with its rapid arms buildup, increasingly assertive military activity and rivalry with the U.S., presents “an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge” to the peace and security of Japan and the international community, the strategy stated.

Tomahawks will be deployed over two years from 2026 to 2027 on advanced Aegis radar-equipped destroyers with vertical launch systems for ship-to-surface attacks, defense officials said.

Japan will also buy more foreign-developed standoff missiles for launch from warplanes — a 500-kilometer- (310-mile-) range Joint Strike Missile from Norway for F-35A fighters, and Lockheed Martin’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile with a range of about 900 kilometers (560 miles), for upgraded F-15s.

Japan will spend 94 billion yen ($710 million) next year to work on upgrading and mass production of Type-12 land-to-ship guided missiles develped by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for deployment within the next few years.

To reinforce strike capability and range, Japan is adding eight more F-35Bs at 143.5 billion yen ($1.08 billion) capable of short takeoffs and vertical landing on either of the two formerly helicopter carriers Izumo and Kaga that are being retrofitted so they could be operated jointly with the U.S. military.

Over the next five years, Japan will spend about 5 trillion yen ($37 billion) on standoff, or long-range missiles, with deployment beginning in four years. Annual spending for 2023 on long-range ammunition alone will be tripled from this year to 828 billion yen ($6.26 billion).

Japan will develop other types of arsenals, such as hypersonic weapons and unmanned and multi-role vehicles for possible collaboration with the F-X next-generation fighter jet Japan is developing with Britain and Italy for deployment in 2035. The Defense Ministry is also developing arsenals designed for defending remote southern islands, including a Japanese-controlled East China Sea island disputed with China.

Japan in using strike-back capability needs to fully rely on the United States to detect early signs of attacks and determine targets because of a lack of high levels of intelligence and cybersecurity, experts say.

To address the concern, Japan will spend about 100 billion yen ($7.6 million) next year also to beef up cybersecurity to protect Japanese defense technology and industry.

Japan will also spend 220 billion yen ($1.7 billion) to build two compact destroyers to be equipped with Aegis radars to strengthen the country's missile interception capability as a deterrent to advanced missiles.

Another key purchase is unmanned aerial vehicles for assaults and reconnaissance. Defense officials said they plan to test a number of foreign-developed UAVs, including Turkish-made Bayraktar used in Ukraine, as well as those from Israel, the United States, as well as home-developed Fuji Imvac.

Japan says counterstrike capability is indispensable and constitutional if it’s in response to signs of an imminent enemy attack. But experts say it is extremely difficult to conduct such an attack without risking blame for striking first. Opponents say strike capability goes beyond self-defense under Japan’s pacifist post-WWII constitution, which limits use of force strictly to defending itself.

That principle, however, was eased in 2015 by then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s constitutional reinterpretation allowing Japan to defend its ally, the United States, in what is known as collective self-defense, providing a legal basis for Japan to build up its military and expand the roles it performs

Bloody property disputes a dark side of Mexico real estate

SIMILAR TO THE VAUGHN ROAD CONDO SHOOTING LAST WEEK IN TORONTO



Police stand guard outside the house where three people were killed, in Mexico City, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022. Actor Andrés Tirado, his musician brother Jorge Tirado and an uncle whose name was not released were found dead Sunday, Dec. 18, all with their throats slashed. Prosecutors said the apparent motive was an ownership dispute over the property. 

(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)More


Fri, December 23, 2022

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A grisly pre-Christmas killing of two young men and their uncle at an early 1900s house in Mexico City cast attention on the dark side of the capital’s booming real estate market, fed by a lack of legal documents and gangs that illegally seize properties.

Actor Andrés Tirado, his musician brother Jorge Tirado and an uncle whose name was not released were found dead Sunday, all with their throats slashed. Prosecutors said the apparent motive was an ownership dispute over the property.

In another case, a young woman on Tuesday posted a desperate video on social media from a rooftop on the city’s south side in which she can be heard screaming: “Police! Help! They have kidnapped me!”

Police said the woman told them relatives had erected a metal door to prevent her from leaving her home, trapping her inside with four children. Police said a dispute over property ownership was behind the alleged abduction and that an investigation was underway into the illegal takeover of the property.

Authorities have known for years there are armed, violent gangs that specialize in taking over houses. The trend is enabled by the fact that many properties — perhaps as many as one-fifth of homes — have no legal papers or have titles listed in the names of dead people who left no will.

According to a 2021 report by the city government's public policy evaluation agency, the percentage of homes in the capital that are occupied by squatters, that have ownership in legal dispute or that had owners who died without a will rose from 10.9% in 2010 to 19.9% in 2020.

Mexico has a costly, inefficient, antiquated and corruption-riddled legal system.

In 2019, Mexico City prosecutors said in some of the 311 active property-seizure cases that year, notary publics, lawyers or real estate firms had falsified papers to force out legitimate owners.

Because it costs so much to have a will drawn up in Mexico, many people do not do so, often leaving those who inherit homes with problems in protecting their rights.

That appears to have been the case in the killings of the Tirado brothers and their uncle. The elderly brother of the uncle's wife died recently after a long illness, but his nurse who had cared for him continued to live on the ground floor of the house in the thriving Roma neighborhood, made famous by the Oscar-winning 2018 movie “Roma.”

Prosecutors gave the following account:

The nurse tried to claim the house was hers based on her supposed romantic relationship with the deceased man. The man's sister moved into the upstairs to prevent the nurse from seizing the home.

The Tirado brothers came to live with their aunt and uncle in August, in part to protect them. The nurse had brought her daughter and son-in-law to live on the ground floor, and the Tirados apparently feared they could become violent.

What followed was a tense, five-month coexistence, with one family downstairs and one upstairs.

The downstairs family “began to act in such a manner that it progressed to this type of violence,” prosecution spokesman Ulises Lara said.

The nurse, her daughter and son-in-law have been ordered jailed pending trial on kidnapping charges. One of the men who may have carried out the killings — also believed to be related to the nurse — has been arrested on drug charges, but is under investigation in the case.

In other cases, gangs have simply forced their way into a property and kicked the occupants out. The city estimates there are 23 home seizure gangs operating in Mexico City, some of them linked to drug gangs and others to quasi-political groups.

“A problem we have in practically the entire city is the problem of property takeovers,” Mexico City prosecutor Ernestina Godoy said in 2019.

In 2016, for instance, a police operation evicted a violent group of squatters from a house in the upscale Condesa neighborhood that the group had seized years before. After the building was recovered, police found underground bunkers and tunnels dug beneath the structure. Weapons and stolen goods were also recovered.

The building was so badly damaged it had to be torn down, in the midst of rising prices and rents and a housing shortage in the city.

Sanctions in the Crypto Market - Maxim Kurbangaleev on Problems in the Industry

Fri, December 23, 2022 ·


NEW YORK, NY - (NewMediaWire) - December 23, 2022 - (Ny Press Wire) - The topic of sanctions is one of the most keenly discussed in 2022, expert Maxim Kurbnagaleev believes. Restrictive measures may be imposed on companies, sectors of the economy or an entire country by other countries, law enforcement agencies, as well as international authorized organizations.

Economic sanctions include measures (suspension or restriction of activities, fines) that are imposed on the company because of violation of certain rules local laws, international standards or other normative legal acts regulating this type of activity.

For instance, the Central Bank of a country may revoke the license of a commercial bank, or a plant may receive a fine from a supervisory organization for improper disposal of waste.

Such cases are described by a set of rules, violation of which leads to punishment. But what if there are no generally accepted rules? Does the activity become illegal in this case, or is it simply not regulated? Participants in cryptocurrency transactions from exchanges to ordinary users ask these questions. Maxim Kurbangaleev told us about the problems in the cryptocurrency sphere and ways to solve them.

How do sanctions work? Maxim Kurbangaleev

Cryptocurrency, as an alternative payment method, appeared relatively recently in 2008. At first, regulators did not pay attention to this activity, but with the rapid growth in the number of users, they had to change this position.

The principle of operation blockchain technology involves recording in blocks all operations ever carried out with a specific unit of cryptocurrency, as well as further copying all available information into new blocks. For security purposes, all this information is encrypted, so market participants cannot scan the entire blockchain without special tools. Previously, such tools did not exist, which is why cryptocurrency was an attractive means for money laundering.

When the volume of transactions became so noticeable to attract the attention of the regulator, blockchain analysis programs appeared (for example, Chainalysis, Coinpath, Etherscan, etc.). They check, systematize and visually present data in the cryptographic chain, so can get information about the participants of transactions. Thanks to these tools, it became possible to track transactions related to illegal activities and blocking of suspicious companies began.

Maxim Kurbangaleev: SUEX is the first crypto exchange to be sanctioned

The first case of imposing sanctions on a cryptocurrency exchange occurred in September 2021, when the Czech company SUEX was included in the sanctions list of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC SDN List). According to the US Treasury Department, SUEX was engaged in laundering money received from fraudulent schemes.

It is also known that the blockchain scanner Chainalysis took part in the investigation of this case. It would seem that a solution to combat illegal crypto operations has been found, but our invited expert Maxim Kurbangaleev believes otherwise. According to him, this approach also affects those who have never participated in illegal schemes:

"Imagine that an ordinary user wants to buy cryptocurrency. He opens an electronic wallet, finds an exchange and purchases cryptocurrency, which goes to his account. Suddenly it turns out that 50 blocks ago, a specific unit of crypto in the user's wallet had been involved in some illegal pyramid, which law enforcement agencies found and applied the appropriate punishment to it. Because of this record in the block, the entire user's wallet receives a label, which, fortunately, does not block all the funds, but significantly limits the range of available actions. Is it fair? I'm sure it is not. Or an exchange platform gets on the sanctions list, and suddenly the entire crypto, which has transactions from this exchange in the blockchain, also becomes sanctioned. Moreover, users cannot cancel such a transfer in order to somehow protect themselves," the expert says.

Unregulated activity: outlawed or illegal? Maxim Kurbangaleev

Cryptocurrency activity has not been legalized in all countries of the world so far. Legalization means that companies have a legal framework based on which they conduct business. But, as a rule, crypto companies operate all over the world, so it is important for them to comply with the laws of not only those jurisdictions where they are registered, but also those where they serve their customers.

At this point business faces another problem the lack of a common legal regime. In some countries cryptocurrency is a legal means of payment on a par with the national currency, in other countries it can be used only by individuals, and elsewhere it is completely ignored by local legislation.

Maxim Kurbangaleev: "In the market there is no general understanding of how to treat cryptocurrency transactions, how to check them, whether the analysis will be enough for an operation in another country, and whether the transaction will not fall into the list of suspicious ones. At the same time, most countries do not impose a direct ban on cryptocurrencies. It is a paradox, but this is how the market works today. In countries where there is no special crypto regulation, the authorities can control transactions at their discretion, applying criteria from related fields. Believe me, it is impossible to predict what measures should be taken by an exchange platform or an exchange in each specific case."
KYC customer verification

Today the majority of crypto companies have come to a common opinion with regard to running their businesses. For example, conducting a customer identification procedure (KYC "Know your customer").

Maxim Kurbangaleev recommends taking this issue seriously: "In addition to the classic blockchain scanners, I would advise businesses to conduct a full audit of customers and counterparties, as banks do. Alas, this increases the cost of servicing operations, but I believe that this is the only way out. In a situation where we cannot know exactly what requirements will be applied to assess the security of a transaction, it is better to use all known precautions. I hope that in the near future this issue will be taken to work at the highest level. The sphere needs a set of rules and laws on which it will rely, a regulatory mechanism that everyone understands, and possibly licensing of companies. Then the crypto business will cease to be "something incomprehensible" for both ordinary citizens and government agencies."

Media Details:
Maxim Kurbangaleev
info@ibis-web3.com

GLOBALIZATION

India's Reliance backs US-based AI startup Exyn in $35 million funding



Manish Singh
Fri, December 23, 2022 

Reliance has backed the Philadelphia-based AI and robotics startup Exyn, the Indian conglomerate disclosed in a stock exchange filing on Thursday, making further inroads in startup backings globally.

Reliance Strategic Business Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has acquired a 23.3% stake in Exyn for $25 million, the Indian firm said.

The Indian firm’s investment is part of a larger $35 million Series B funding of the Philadelphia startup, which operates a robotic autonomy for complex, GPS-denied environments.

The AI startup "commercialises the highest level of aerial drone autonomy in the world, Autonomy Level 4 (AL4.) Exyn’s robots are able to autonomously navigate in previously inaccessible environments without a prior map, existing infrastructure (GPS, communications, etc.), or an operator in the loop," according to a description on its site.

Reliance, which operates India's largest retail chain as well as the top telecom operator in the nation, said it will find synergies with the startup on the Indian conglomerate's initiatives surrounding drone, industrial safety, security and robotics areas, while accelerating "Exyn’s product and technology development across multiple application areas and commercialization."

The startup had a turnover of $4.32 million, $1.83 million and $0.16 million in CY 2021, CY 2020 and CY 2019 respectively, the Indian firm added.

Reliance Industries, or one of its units, has made a series of investments this year, including hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo and Google-backed Android lockscreen platform Glance.

In March, Reliance Strategic Business Ventures said it planned to invest up to $221 million in U.S. electronics firm Sanmina to set up a joint venture as the Indian giant looks to expand its electronics manufacturing. The joint venture aims to create a “world-class” electronic manufacturing hub in India, the two said.

Earlier on Thursday, Reliance said it had agreed to acquire the India unit of Metro AG for $344 million. Metro, which entered the Indian market nearly two decades ago, operates 31 wholesale distribution centers across the country.

“With our mission of decreasing the amount of injuries and fatalities in ‘physical’ industries gathering data in dangerous environments, having this investment will accelerate Exyn’s impact and growth. With this new capital, we will further expand our worldwide footprint to dramatically improve safety for those working in dangerous environments around the world and keeping them out of harm’s way,” Nader Elm, chief executive of Exyn, said in a statement Friday.

Adnan Syed hired by Georgetown's prison reform initiative


 Adnan Syed, center right, leaves the courthouse after a hearing on Sept. 19, 2022, in Baltimore. Syed, who was released from a Maryland prison this year after his case was the focus of the true-crime podcast “Serial,” has been hired by Georgetown University as a program associate for the university's Prisons and Justice Initiative, the university said Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. 

(Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun via AP, File)

BRIAN WITTE
Thu, December 22, 2022 


ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Adnan Syed, who was released from a Maryland prison this year after his case was the focus of the true-crime podcast “Serial,” has been hired by Georgetown University as a program associate for the university's Prisons and Justice Initiative, the university said.

Syed started working this month for the initiative, which advocates for others in the criminal legal system, the university tweeted Wednesday.

In his new role, Syed will support Georgetown’s “Making an Exoneree” class, in which students reinvestigate decades-old wrongful convictions, create short documentaries about the cases and work to help bring innocent people home from prison, the university wrote in an online announcement.

“PJI’s team and programming has so much to gain from Adnan’s experience, insight, and commitment to serving incarcerated people and returning citizens,” the organization tweeted.

Syed had been one of 25 incarcerated students at Georgetown's inaugural Bachelor of Liberal Arts program at the Patuxent Institute in Jessup, Maryland, during the year leading up to his release, the university said.

“To go from prison to being a Georgetown student and then to actually be on campus on a pathway to work for Georgetown at the Prisons and Justice Initiative, it’s a full circle moment,” Syed said in the university's announcement. “PJI changed my life. It changed my family’s life. Hopefully I can have the same kind of impact on others.”

Syed, 41, hopes to continue his Georgetown education and eventually go to law school.

After spending 23 years in prison, he walked out of a Baltimore courthouse in September after a judge overturned his conviction for the 1999 murder of high school student Hae Min Lee, Syed’s ex-girlfriend.

Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn ordered his release at the behest of prosecutors who said they had recently uncovered new evidence.

Prosecutors said a reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence regarding the possible involvement of two alternate suspects. The two suspects may have been involved individually or together, the state’s attorney’s office said.

The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense, prosecutors said.

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's office also cited new results from DNA testing that was conducted using a more modern technique than when evidence in the case was first tested. The recent testing excluded Syed as a suspect, prosecutors said.

Syed always maintained his innocence. His case captured the attention of millions in 2014 when the debut season of “Serial” focused on Lee’s killing and raised doubts about some of the evidence prosecutors had used. The program shattered podcast-streaming and downloading records.

COPS OUT OF CONTROL

Fatal police shooting of startup founder puts Austin’s diversity issues in the spotlight

Mary Ann Azevedo
Thu, December 22, 2022 

Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe (right) and his brother Johann Moonesinghe (left) pictured with their cousin (center) WHO HAS NO NAME
 Image Credits: Johann Moonesinghe

For years, Austin has made headlines as an evolving tech hub where startups, large companies and investors alike have flocked to set up a presence.

But as 2022 closes, the Texas capital is in the news for a very different, tragic reason -- being home to the sudden death of a startup founder at the hands of a police officer.

On November 15, inKind co-founder Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe was fatally shot outside of his south Austin home in what his family and colleagues describe as a senseless accident that could have been avoided.

The 33-year-old had returned from a two-week trip to discover that things looked out of place in his home, according to his brother, Johann. The affluent neighborhood had recently become a target for criminals -- to the point that one homeowner had felt so unsafe after being robbed that she moved out. The new owners proactively hired 24-hour-security to stand guard in front of their house.

A few weeks prior, Moonesinghe had purchased an assault rifle to protect himself should a burglar attempt to enter his home. In what would turn out to be a sadly prophetic warning, his neighbor and inKind COO El Khattary had cautioned, “A brown man with a big gun doesn't get the benefit of the doubt.”

Moonesinghe had reportedly talked earlier with his neighbor across the street, expressing concern that someone might be in his home, and retrieved his rifle as he looked around his property. With his front door open, Moonesinghe yelled for whoever might be in his home to get out. He also shot his rifle into the home. The neighbor’s security guard called 911.

According to Moonesinghe’s brother, Ring camera footage showed police arriving at his brother’s property with no sirens or lights, with one of the officers fatally shooting Raj.

“The police didn’t announce themselves or give him time to put the gun down,” Johann told TechCrunch. (A video of the incident can be seen here. Warning: It may be inappropriate for some viewers.)

The officers said they performed life-saving measures on Raj, before he was ultimately pronounced dead at a local hospital.

It was two days later, though, before Raj’s family knew what happened to him. The police at first held a press conference, saying that “a white man" had been shot but did not disclose details.

“We were super confused,” Johann said. “We knew the cops were there, and we couldn’t get a hold of Raj. At first we thought it was him, and then we thought it wasn’t. They said they killed a white man who had been shooting up the neighborhood. We didn’t know what to think.”

The incident took place at 12:30 am on Tuesday, November 15. But the Moonesinghe family claim they were not notified by police of Raj’s death until the evening of Thursday, November 17.

“Raj was awesome, absolutely phenomenal. He just went out of his way to help other people," Johann told TechCrunch. "This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me and my family. The hardest part for me is that it was avoidable."

"We’re lucky that we have a very strong family, incredible friends and super supportive people around us," he continued. "It's not only hard to lose somebody you love, but it's doubly, triply hard because of the way the police handled it."

TechCrunch reached out to the Austin Police Department (APD) and was referred to a December 1 press release stating the department continued to investigate the shooting.

At the top of the release, Raj was described as a deceased Middle Eastern male. In the body of the release, the APD said the 911 caller had described a man with a gun “as a white male, wearing a grey robe and dark pants.”

In that release, the police department identified Officer Daniel Sanchez as the individual who fatally shot Raj. Sanchez is reportedly on administrative leave pending the department's investigations. In its statement, APD said that it would conduct two concurrent investigations into the incident -- a criminal investigation conducted by the APD Special Investigations Unit in conjunction with the Travis County District Attorney's Office, and an administrative investigation conducted by the APD Internal Affairs Unit, with oversight from the Office of Police Oversight.

After moving to Austin about five years ago, inKind this year leased 22,000 square feet of office space that was Facebook’s first office in Austin. Business is going well, according to Johann. The startup, which launched in 2016 by funding restaurants by purchasing large amounts of food and beverage credits upfront, has raised $27 million in growth equity and $130 million in debt over the past year and has about 74 employees. It’s operating at a $48 million run rate, Johann said.

“What makes me really sad is that startups are very, very hard, and Raj worked so hard for years and years. And now that the company is really on a rocket ship, he’s not here to enjoy that,” he added.

Johann told TechCrunch he also feels “guilty” because of the decision several years ago to move the startup he helped co-found with his brother, Andrew Harris, Matt Saeta and Miles Matthias to Austin from Washington, D.C. An early investor in Uber and Twilio, Johann said he was hoping to relocate to a state without taxes. Seattle and Miami were also considered.

“Obviously the shooting was not my fault,” Johann told TechCrunch. “But I don’t believe this would have happened in another place. I’m gay and brown, grew up in LA, and lived a long time in D.C. The only time I have ever experienced racism was when I moved to Austin.” While the brothers' family is from Sri Lanka, the pair were born in Los Angeles.

Khattary told TechCrunch he views the city's lack of diversity as "a weird thing" considering its so-called progressive reputation, and called police treatment of people of color "disheartening." For example, during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, 19 officers were accused of seriously injuring protestors. Earlier this year, the officers were indicted for using excessive force.

"Clearly, there’s something in Austin and Black Lives Matter in 2020 highlighted a lot of it," he told TechCrunch. "This is a nationwide problem but Austin definitely has more than its fair share. In this case, the officer perceived him [Raj] as a major threat and didn’t give him a chance."

The contrast between the city’s progressiveness and a population that is mostly “very hospitable” and incidents such as this one can be hard for outsiders to grasp, Johann said.

“I don’t think there’s overt racism. It’s more unconscious biases, with people making judgements around others in a split second,” he added. “And that’s really problematic. I do believe that if Raj were white, he probably wouldn't have been killed.”

Austin’s lack of diversity is not a new problem. As TechCrunch reported in March, the percentage of Black residents, for example, steadily decreased over time to an estimated 7% in 2020. An increasing number of Austin’s neighborhoods resemble those seen in Silicon Valley, with largely white and Asian residents and far fewer Hispanic and Black people.

Johann doesn’t want his brother to have died in vain. While he says he currently doesn’t “feel safe” in Austin and that it’s hard for him to consider asking other people to move here, he also knows that they can’t just move inKind.

Instead, he’s hoping to help change Austin “to make it a place that’s safe for everyone.”

“I hope that the Austin police even start the dialogue, give us some answers and explain to us what they’re going to do differently so this doesn’t happen again,” Johann said.

He also wants to potentially raise capital that would go toward specifically investing in companies that through data, improved security cameras and other tech could possibly help prevent what happened to Raj from happening to others.

Criminal defense attorney explains why you should avoid self-checkout lanes: ‘Theft by mistake’

THE REASON HARDWARE STORES HAVE A SHOPLIFTING PROBLEM

Dillon Thompson

Wed, December 21, 2022 

A lawyer is going viral after sharing why she often suggests that shoppers avoid using self-checkout lanes.

Carrie Jernigan (@carriejernigan1), is a criminal defense attorney with more than 1 million followers on TikTok. Much of her page is dedicated to aspects of the legal system that TikTokers may not know about.

In one recent video, Jernigan said that she typically tells people to “steer clear” of self-checkout lanes. The reason? Shoplifters.

Buy, sell or hold? How to decide what to do with a plummeting stock

As Jernigan explains it, she usually sees three kinds of people getting charged with shoplifting after using a self-checkout lane.

The first, she says, are professional shoplifters. The second group, however, are those guilty of what she calls “theft by mistake.” This, according to Jernigan, is where innocent people can get into trouble.

“These are the people that I genuinely think just forgot to scan an item,” she says. “It is usually something that was on the bottom rack of the cart … and when they are walking out, asset protection stops them.”

Jernigan explains that, in the early days of self-checkout, she noticed stores letting people off if they forgot to scan an item.

“They let almost all of these people either scan and pay for the item, or just let them go, but took the item they did not pay for,” she says.

Now, however, stores aren’t as lenient, she says. Jernigan believes this is because shoplifters have become so adept at stealing from self-checkout lanes that stores no longer want to take a gamble on whether a theft was accidental.

“They have lost all sympathy, and they are just taking a ‘Tell it to the judge’ approach,” she adds.

Lastly, Jernigan breaks down the third group. These people, who she calls “the truly innocent,” are usually charged long after the day they bought something.

“It is something that [happens when] asset protection is doing a quality-control check, or inventory that weeks, days, months later comes up short,” she says. “So they will begin watching hours of video.”

These checks, she says, can sometimes result in shoppers getting charged unfairly, simply because they bought one of the items that went missing.

The stakes can quickly get high. Although shoplifting is usually considered a misdemeanor, many states can sentence offenders to a year in prison. If the charge is elevated to a felony, the prison time could be much longer.

Jernigan’s last bit of advice? Don’t pay in cash. As she explains at the end of the clip, that will make it even harder to prove what you did or didn’t buy.

If you’re innocent, Jernigan notes, it’s likely that you’ll eventually be able to present evidence to prove it. However, that comes at the cost of time, money and effort.

“At that point, so much damage has already been done,” she says.

FOR PROFIT SENIOR CARE

This nursing home chain reported the highest COVID death rate. Then it deleted deaths.

Jayme Fraser and Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY
Fri, December 23, 202

Federal regulators will review the official tally of COVID-19 deaths at one of the nation’s largest nursing home chains after the company cut its reported death toll by an unprecedented 42% following a USA TODAY investigation.

Presented with USA TODAY’s findings that Trilogy Health Services had the worst death rate among its peers during last winter’s coronavirus surge, company officials said they discovered they had included deaths in their mandatory weekly reports that should not have been counted.

On Thursday, a chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services called the resulting changes “concerning.”

“CMS takes reports of data inaccuracy very seriously and will hold any bad actors accountable,” Dr. Lee Fleisher, the agency’s director of clinical standards and quality, said in an emailed statement.

The Midwest chain originally reported 772 deaths at 113 facilities from October 2020 through February 2021. The cut of 325 deaths, which the company said is based on federal guidance, drops its reported rate from highest to third-highest among the nation’s 10 largest nursing home chains.

Dying for Care: This nursing home chain stood out for nationally high death rates as pandemic peaked

Even more deaths could be excluded from the official tally for Trilogy, which operates homes in four states: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

Trilogy plans to submit another revision to its data for dozens more weeks beyond those analyzed in USA TODAY’s investigation. Damon Elder, a spokesman for American Healthcare REIT – the real estate investment trust that owns Trilogy facilities and shares in company profits – said Wednesday that he did not know the scale of those additional changes.

The revisions submitted by Trilogy deleted as many deaths as had been removed by a combined 13,500 other facilities. No other chain came close. Most large chains that revised their numbers added deaths, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the data posted on the CMS website.

Map of US
How U.S. nursing homes fared during COVID-19's worst surge
Explore the data


Last week, CMS spokesperson Mark Brager said the agency's policy is to accept revisions to self-reported COVID-19 case data without explanation or review. This week, Fleisher clarified that the agency would review Trilogy’s changes.

Federal rules adjusted for the pandemic allowed facilities to charge a higher rate for people with COVID-19 who were treated at the nursing home instead of being transferred to a hospital.

Asked whether the company’s revised accounting of COVID-19 cases and deaths would be compared to Medicare and Medicaid bills paid by CMS on behalf of residents, Fleisher described “some challenges” but did not specify whether such a review would take place. While COVID-19 tracking data was used to monitor cases and deaths in real time, it did not include the names of people counted, making it difficuilt to match with federal billing records that are tracked in a separate system.

Elder said Trilogy has not been contacted by either CMS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about its revisions. Since late May 2020, CMS has required facilities to submit weekly reports of new COVID-19 cases and deaths to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a database run by the CDC.

Explore: When does a nursing home COVID-19 death count? It's complicated.

The government has used the information to award billions of dollars in COVID aid as well as target inspections and identify facilities that might need extra support during outbreaks.

Some academic researchers, who have relied on the data to study how and why COVID-19 has killed more than 140,000 people in nursing homes, called on government officials to step up after learning of Trilogy’s extensive revisions.

David Grabowski, a health care policy professor at Harvard University medical school who studies nursing home performance, called Trilogy’s revisions “suspicious.”

Weekly COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes

Grabowski said there “should be some consequences” for submitting incorrect data to the national COVID-19 reporting system because of how important the system is to government officials and researchers who use it to understand the pandemic.

“Either they are admitting they submitted bad data or they are going back and altering the data to make themselves look better,” he said. “I don’t like either of those outcomes and both of them speak to the need for increased oversight and accountability.”

Charlene Harrington, who has studied nursing home quality for more than four decades, agreed that CMS should thoroughly investigate.

“I really don't see why CMS would let nursing homes revise their reports without some specific evidence that documents the information,” said the professor emerita at the University of California, San Francisco.

A report from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which examined the early days of the federal reporting, found the majority of nursing home submissions appeared complete. An updated evaluation is due to be published in September.

Federal regulators “should be asking questions” about significant revisions, such as the one made by Trilogy, said Karen Shen, a Harvard Ph.D. candidate who led a study estimating at least 16,000 people died in nursing homes before mandatory reporting.

Fleisher, the CMS official, said reviews of NHSN submissions are limited by “capacity challenges,” so they typically take place only after the agency receives an inquiry or complaint. It is one reason, he said, “why President Biden’s budget calls on Congress to increase CMS inspection resources by nearly 25%.”

Vince Mor, a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health, said he is concerned that the CDC and CMS do not actively audit or otherwise verify data submitted to the NHSN.

“It is much easier to just blame the incompetency of the facilities reporting,” he said. “It is a miracle that any of the data make any sense at all.”

Another person hoping for government action after Trilogy’s revision: Shana Driver, whose mother died in a Trilogy-owned nursing home in Indiana last winter.

A 103-degree fever suggested and two positive tests confirmed Sue Miller had COVID-19, Driver said, remembering what she learned during conversations with nurses. Two weeks later, the family was approved for final bedside visits inside the COVID-19 ward.

Miller died on Day 4 of their vigil, Dec. 21, 2020, while her son-in-law sat at her bedside playing her favorite Bee Gees songs.

Sue Miller’s death certificate lists COVID-19 pneumonia as the cause of death. Originally, Trilogy reported four deaths that week, all from the pandemic virus. Its revised data shows none.

“I don’t know how they can just erase that,” Driver said. “That just makes me angry. … They are just trying to erase people.”

Elder, the Trilogy spokesman, declined to comment about specific cases. He noted that it was common for deaths or cases to be reported in subsequent weeks rather than the weeks they occurred. Trilogy reported five COVID-19 deaths the week after Miller died. Federal rules require facilities to accurately link cases and deaths to the week they happened.

The revisions were spurred by a first-of-its-kind data analysis by USA TODAY, which identified Trilogy Health Services as reporting COVID-19 death rates twice the national average – 7 per 1,000 residents – during the pandemic’s worst months in nursing homes.

With its revised death numbers, Trilogy ranked No. 3 out of the nation's Top 10 chains –behind the Good Samaritan Society, a nonprofit chain operated by Sanford Health, and Signature HealthCARE, a for-profit chain, USA TODAY found in an updated analysis.

In a written statement, officials from the Good Samaritan Society and Signature HealthCARE did not explain why their average death rates were higher than other large operators, many with facilities in the same states. The companies critiqued the USA TODAY analysis for focusing on the months before vaccines were widely available – when almost half of all COVID-19 nursing home deaths occurred.

“Our nursing homes were dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic and a virus that disproportionately targets older adults and those with underlying conditions. This is the very population the Good Samaritan Society is called to serve,” President and CEO Nathan Schema wrote.

SignatureHealthCARE’s statement described USA TODAY’s work as part of a “continual barrage of negatively focused media,” detailing the extra expenses the company incurred to provide care during the pandemic and an infection control program launched in early 2021.

“Throughout our ongoing battle and crusade against COVID-19, the long-term care and skilled nursing healthcare sector as a whole has been attacked, and not just by the virus,” read the statement sent by Communications Manager Ann Bowdan Wilder. “Unfortunately, and quite egregiously, our sector has become the maligned focus of media and other high profile, predatory platforms for negative stories, unbalanced reporting, targeted blame, and inflammatory finger pointing.”

Trilogy leaders have disputed USA TODAY’s characterization of the company's facilities compared with its peers, arguing that Trilogy officials had overcounted COVID-19 deaths while many nursing homes undercounted them.

“Reporting practices in several of the states where we operate have recently come under scrutiny, specifically regarding under-reporting of cases and deaths. Therefore, we feel any comparison data with our competitors at this point is unreliable,” Trilogy CEO Leigh Ann Barney said in a video message sent to the “Trilogy family” days before USA TODAY published its findings.

Good Samaritan Society and Signature HealthCARE described their own reporting to the NHSN as complete. Signature operates facilities in some of the same states as Trilogy.

The Indianapolis Star, part of the USA TODAY Network, has extensively reported on deaths at nursing homes in Indiana, including some that state officials said were reported accurately to the federal system but not to the state. The Ohio Health Department similarly audited death reports and found hundreds in nursing homes that had not been counted in its state tally, but it is unclear whether those same deaths had been accurately reported to federal regulators.

Rachel Reeves, a spokesperson for the American Health Care Association, cited the inspector general's audit as proof that facilities, by and large, complied with COVID-19 reporting requirements. That report found 95% of the nation’s more than 15,000 nursing homes completed all required survey fields with no obvious errors, such as wildly unrealistic numbers, although the tallies were not audited.

“Nursing homes come under frequent ‘scrutiny’ as the representative at Trilogy mentions, but that does not necessarily mean underreporting occurred,” wrote Reeves, who represents the largest industry association for nursing homes.

Nursing homes have been the focus of increased inquiry amid the pandemic. One federal OIG report found 1 million of the nation’s 3 million nursing home residents contracted COVID-19 in 2020. The White House is preparing to use its executive authority to tighten industry regulations while some members of Congress say they want to dig into the corporate owners and operators.

'Profiteering, cold-hearted': Nursing home owners should be investigated, congressman says

In a report released last week, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called for federal officials to expand the government’s tracking and regulation of nursing home companies, highlighting private equity firms and real estate investment trusts as models that should be evaluated.

A majority of Trilogy’s buildings are owned by a real estate investment trust, American Healthcare REIT.

In addition to collecting rent, American Healthcare shares profits from Trilogy's operations – a model allowed under a federal law revised in 2008. The concept was permitted earlier for REITs outside health care to allow them to offer basic services for their properties, such as cleaning. American Healthcare REIT appears to be the first large trust to use RIDEA, or the REIT Investment Diversification and Empowerment Act, in nursing homes.

With complex ownership structures, which often involve a web of related businesses, savvy owners can reduce taxes, shield money from potential lawsuits and route profits up to the top of a corporate chain even as individual facilities report operating in the red. This makes it difficult, experts said, for the federal government to understand how much of its nursing home funding, paid through Medicare and Medicaid claims, actually goes to care as intended.

Contributing: Letitia Stein

Jayme Fraser and Nick Penzenstadler are reporters on the USA TODAY investigations team. Contact Jayme at jfraser@gannett.com, @jaymekfraser on Twitter or on Signal at (541) 362-1393. Nick can be reached at npenz@usatoday.com, @npenzenstadler on Twitter or on Signal at (720) 507-5273.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nursing home COVID deaths: One chain deletes 42% of its death tally

Texas power prices spike more than 400% in one day as bomb cyclone sends energy demand soaring


Brian Evans
Fri, December 23, 2022

Icicles hang off the State Highway 195 sign in Killeen, Texas.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In some parts of Texas, prices for power to be delivered on Friday evening more than quintupled, topping $500 per megawatt-hour.


On Friday night, temperatures in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are expected to dip below 20 degrees.


Outage data shows roughly 53,000 Texas residents were experiencing a loss of power on Thursday.

Forecasts for below-freezing temperatures in Texas sent power prices surging more than 400% in the span of just one day.

In some parts of the state, prices for power to be delivered on Friday evening more than quintupled from the prior day, topping $500 per megawatt-hour, according to Bloomberg.

On Friday night, temperatures in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are expected to dip below 20 degrees. Meanwhile, Houston will reach the low 20s, and even south Texas will be in the mid 20s.

Current expectations project electricity usage will climb to 70.9 gigawatts on Friday, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, surpassing the previous record of 69.8 gigawatts. Put into context, one gigawatt is enough energy to power roughly 200,000 homes.

The cold spell is a callback to February of 2021, when a power grid meltdown killed 200 people in the state while outages forced some Texans to burn furniture in their fireplaces to stay warm.

Officials remain confident that the power grid can handle the increased demand. But the grid has already come under strain. Outage data showed roughly 53,000 Texas residents were experiencing a loss of power on Thursday night.

State regulators have taken steps to winterize the necessary equipment to prepare for the freezing weather, although some critics argue more is needed to prepare the state's power grid.