Andrew Tate arrest casts light on Romania's sexcam boom

Issued on: 14/02/2023 


Bucharest (AFP) – The arrest of controversial online influencer Andrew Tate for alleged rape and human trafficking in Romania has shone a spotlight on the country's burgeoning sexcam industry.

Within a decade it has ballooned from a niche activity to one of the world's biggest purveyors of virtual sex, with an estimated 500 studios popping up across the poor Eastern European country.

But the industry fears the investigation into claims that Tate -- a notorious misogynist -- and his brother Tristan forced women into prostitution and sexcamming will tarnish their reputation.

Romanian sexcam operaters told AFP that they had no idea that the British-American kickboxer -- who claims to have made millions from sexcamming -- had a studio until the "scandal" broke.

"The Tate brothers are not known in the industry and have never participated in industry events," said Maria Boroghina, a manager at Best Studios, one of Romania's biggest sexcam operators.

British-US influencers Andrew  & Tristan Tate denies human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal group © Daniel MIHAILESCU / AFP/File

A former camgirl herself, Boroghina is proud of her slick operation which takes up a whole floor of a glitzy glass building in central Bucharest.

"This job offers you the opportunity to earn big" from your early twenties, she said as young women in bathrobes stopped for coffee after several hours in front of the camera.
$8,000 a month

Boroghina said they had 160 women on their books. "The average monthly after-tax salary of our camgirls is $8,000 (7,500 euros)," about 10 times the average Romanian salary.

Maria Boroghina, manager of Best Studio, one of Romania's biggest sexcam operators © Andrei Pungovschi / AFP

"Everything is transparent and legal," she added. "The girls work under contract and receive between 50 to 90 percent of the money" they make for the studio, she added.

Clients pay between $2 and $10 per minute "for a private conversation with the girls", who broadcast up to eight hours or more a day.

Romania's startling success in the sexcam business has been driven by several factors, Boroghina argued.

"Romanian women are beautiful and smart, they speak very good English and we have good internet speeds," she told AFP.

Two bedrooms in a Bucharest sexcam studio © Andrei Pungovschi / AFP

Even though the industry is legal, it is neither regulated under Romanian law nor recognised in terms of taxation, forcing the women to work as "online service providers" based on a copyright contract.

While the Romanian industry insists that all is above board, Fabrizio Sarrica of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said "worldwide we have seen an increasing number of (trafficked) victims that have been recruited to work behind the camera.

"It's highly profitable" for criminals because a large number of "clients from all over the world" have access and the "images can be used multiple times, and sold on the darknet," he added.
'This is not fair'

But defenders of the industry like Boroghina and Ruxandra Tataru, an organiser of a sexcam industry event called the Bucharest Summit, said they would welcome regulation.

Shoes line a wardrobe in a dressing room at the Best Studios sexcam headquarters in Bucharest © Andrei Pungovschi / AFP

Sexually explicit content "only represents five percent of the work", Boroghina insisted, saying Romanians cannot access Best Studios sexcams to protect the women's privacy.

"Training is what allows a girl to earn money by keeping her clothes on for as long as possible," she said.

Tataru argued that platforms like TikTok and OnlyFans have helped to remove "the stigma around this activity".

"Romanian women represent 40 percent of the videochat industry worldwide," said Anastasia, a 33-year-old former camgirl, who is the "models' representative" at another Bucharest studio, Models4Models.

The studio's head of marketing, Alexandra, who declined to give her full name, said it was "unjust that from a scandal like this people think that Andrew Tate represents the videochat industry. This is not fair."

Alexandra, head of marketing for a videochat studio, said it 'wasn't fair' that Tate represents the industry © Andrei Pungovschi / AFP

Tate 36, denies all wrongdoing and claims there is no evidence against him.

However, Boroghina said the scandal could end up being positive if it pushed politicians to better regulate the expanding business.

"There is no bad publicity and I believe this case helps to put the industry back into the spotlight, as an opportunity to educate people," she said.

© 2023 AFP

Amazon deploys fleet of self-driving robotaxis on California streets

Online retailer has been aggressively expanding into driverless technology and bought the startup Zoox

Amazon tests a fleet of driverless 'robotaxis' in California – video


Guardian staff and agencies

Tue 14 Feb 2023 

Amazon is testing a fleet of robotaxis on public roads in California, using employees as passengers, as the tech behemoth moves closer to a commercial service for the general public.

The online retailer has been aggressively expanding into self-driving technology and bought the self-driving startup Zoox for $1.3bn in 2020. A test conducted on 11 February saw the robotaxis successfully drive between two Zoox buildings a mile apart at its headquarters in Foster City, California. It was part of the launch of a no-cost employee shuttle service that will also help the company refine its technology.


Zoox’s robotaxi – built as a fully autonomous vehicle from scratch rather than retrofitting existing cars for self-driving – comes without a steering wheel or pedals and has room for four passengers, with two facing each other.

An autonomous Zoox car during a test drive through Lombard Street in San Francisco, California, in October. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

“Putting the vehicle on [an] open public road and validating our approach to all of the different requirements, including regulatory, is a big step and we would not have done it unless internally we were already looking at the line of sight for going commercial,” chief executive Aicha Evans told reporters on a conference call.


How self-driving cars got stuck in the slow lane

Evans declined to provide a timeline for the commercial launch, which will need additional government clearances.

Despite Silicon Valley’s promise to revolutionize the way we drive, autonomous vehicles have been slower to roll out than expected, and the technology has proven tough to master. Ford and Volkswagen last fall announced they would shutter their Argo AI self-driving unit and focus on driver-assistance technology that provided more immediate returns.

Companies still pursuing development of this technology include General Motors’ Cruise unit and Alphabet’s Waymo.

But rapid interest rate hikes and weak consumer demand sparked fears of a global recession, forcing many companies, including automakers and tech giants, to trim their workforces and claw back costs.

Zoox’s tech chief, Jesse Levinson, said the company has been prudent about its growth but was still on track to reach 2,500 employees this year, up from just under 2,000 employees at the beginning of the year.

Reuters contributed reporting

'Rebirth' in Rio as carnival street parties return

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This is the first year Rio has authorized carnival street parties since Covid-19 hit Brazil. AFP/Mauro Pimentel

RIO DE JANEIRO - Covered in golden glitter, Brazilian domestic worker Vera Lucia da Silva is bursting to be back parading through Rio de Janeiro in a carnival street party, after a three-year hiatus for Covid-19.

This year marks the full comeback of the world's biggest carnival after Rio hosted a watered-down version in 2022 -- postponed by two months because of the pandemic, and held without the epic street parties known as "blocos" that usually swarm the iconic beach city this time of year.

"To people from Rio, street carnival is everything that's good in life," beamed Da Silva, as she paraded through the hillside neighbourhood of Santa Teresa in a bloco known as "Ceu na Terra" -- Heaven on Earth.

Members of the 'Heaven on Earth' street carnival band parade through the streets of Santa Teresa, in Rio de Janeiro

AFP | MAURO PIMENTEL

Rio authorised around 400 blocos this year. They have been flooding the streets ahead of the main carnival event: the city's samba school parade competition, scheduled for Sunday and Monday nights.

Many revellers are also celebrating because it is the first carnival since the election loss of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right conservative whose critics accuse him of authoritarian tendencies and attacking numerous causes close to the carnival community's heart, from diversity to gay rights to the arts.

Some revellers poked fun at the ex-army captain, whose slogan was "Brazil above all, God above everyone."

"We're for 'carnival atop all, booze inside everyone,'" said 44-year-old teacher Amelia Crespo, who was sporting the Brazilian football team's yellow jersey, a national symbol that Bolsonaro supporters attempted to claim as their own.

"This is a moment of rebirth," said Pericles Monteiro, a founder of Ceu na Terra and conductor of its 200-member band.

Members of the 'Heaven on Earth' bloco's brass band

AFP | MAURO PIMENTEL

There is an optimistic vibe in the air at "Samba City," the sprawling hangars where the samba schools prepare the towering floats and sumptuous costumes for their world-famous shows at the city's "Sambadrome" parade venue.

"You can feel it: culture is valued again," said Tarcisio Zanon, creative director at the Viradouro samba school.

"This is going to be a carnival of redemption, of hope for a better future."

Rio officials are expecting five million people to take part in street carnival, moving an estimated one billion reais ($190 million) for the local economy.

Source

AFP

Chinese balloon sensors recovered from ocean, says US



No indication of aliens... I loved ET but I'll leave it there - WH spokeswoman

By Max Matza

BBC News

The sensors from a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down over the US earlier this month have been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, the US says.

Search crews found "significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified", said US Northern Command.

The FBI is examining the items, which the US said were used to spy on sensitive military sites.

The US has shot down three more objects since the first on 4 February.

"Large sections of the structure" were also recovered on Monday off the coast of South Carolina, military officials said.

About 30-40ft (9-12m) of the balloon's antennas were among the items found, according to CBS, the BBC's US partner.


US officials said the high-altitude balloon originated in China and was used for surveillance, but China said it was a weather-monitoring airship that had blown astray.

Since that first incident, American fighter jets have shot down three more high-altitude objects - over Alaska, Canada's Yukon territory, and Lake Huron on the US-Canada border.

But officials have not said these objects were suspected spy balloons.

In the Lake Huron strike, the first Sidewinder missile fired by the US F-16 warplane missed its target and exploded in an unknown location, US media reported, citing military sources.

The second missile hit the target. Each Sidewinder missile costs more than $400,000 (£330,000).

Strange flying objects - unanswered questions

How has China reacted to the balloon saga?

Officials have said the slow-moving unidentified objects, all of which have been smaller than the first balloon, may be difficult for military pilots to target.

White House spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the three other objects were shot down "out of an abundance of caution".

They did not pose "any direct threat to people on the ground", but were destroyed "to protect our security, our interests and flight safety", he said.

The balloon shot down over South Carolina was described by officials as the size of three buses.

The second object, over Alaska, was described as the size of a "small car". The third object, over the Yukon, was "cylindrical". And the fourth, over Michigan, was said to be "octagonal" with strings attached.

A Pentagon memo later reported in US media said the flying object shot down over Yukon appeared to be a "small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it".

On Tuesday, Mr Kirby said that the objects did not appear to be involved in intelligence collection and "could be balloons that were simply tied to commercial or research entities, and therefore benign".

But he noted no company, organisation or government have said they were the owners of the objects.

Media caption,
Watch: 'What’s going on?' The mind-boggling balloon mystery in 61 seconds


The recovery of the balloon shot down on 4 February was delayed due to bad weather.

Efforts are under way to collect debris from where the other objects were blown out of the sky.

Canadian Armed Forces Major-General Paul Prévost said all three of the most recent objects to be shot down appeared to be "lighter than air" machines, and described the Lake Huron object as "a suspected balloon".

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is considering meeting China's most senior diplomat, Wang Yi, later this week at a security conference in Munich, Germany, sources familiar with the negotiations told US media on Monday.

Amid the row over high-altitude aircraft, America's top diplomat cancelled a visit to Beijing that was initially planned for last week.

Meanwhile, in a sign of heightened tensions over the incidents in the US, Romania scrambled fighter jets on Tuesday to investigate an aerial object entering European airspace.

But the country's defence ministry said the pilots were unable to locate it and abandoned the mission after half an hour.

US NAVY
Navy divers helped recover the balloon from the Atlantic Ocean

 

Cambodia rejects 'biased' concerns over news outlet closure

Mon, February 13, 2023 


Cambodia on Tuesday hit back at "politically driven" and "biased" concerns from Western governments over the shutdown of one of the country's last independent media outlets ahead of national elections.

Online Khmer- and English-language outlet Voice of Democracy (VOD) stopped broadcasting on Monday. Prime Minister Hun Sen had ordered its licence revoked over what he said was an erroneous report about his eldest son.

Late Monday night the United States said it was "deeply concerned" by the "abrupt" closure of the broadcaster, adding to a chorus of criticism over Phnom Penh's actions.

Earlier, the United States, French and German embassies in Cambodia had voiced concerns about the closure, in the run-up to the national polls.

In a statement, a Cambodian foreign ministry spokesman rejected "the politically-driven, prejudiced and biased concerns" of some embassies.

"An administrative action against a rule-breaking entity does not merit any worry at all," the spokesman said.

VOD, broadcasting since 2003, published a February 9 story alleging that Hun Sen's son, Lieutenant General Hun Manet, had signed off on funds to help earthquake-hit Turkey.

Hun Manet, who has been backed to succeed his father, has denied the claim, with Hun Sen stating he authorised the $100,000 relief package.

Hun Sen demanded an apology from VOD, but refused to reconsider his decision to revoke its licence even after the outlet later complied.

One of the world's longest-serving leaders, Hun Sen has increasingly cracked down on dissent as he prepares for polls in July, according to observers.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said on Tuesday the shuttering of VOD "may spell the end for the media environment necessary for credible elections".

"Hun Sen's closure of Voice of Democracy is a devastating blow to media freedom in the country, and will have an impact across Cambodian society," he added.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk also called on Hun Sen's government "to rescind this very troubling decision".

Press freedoms have long been under attack in Cambodia, with The Cambodia Daily shuttered in 2017 and a score of outlets closed the following year ahead of the 2018 elections.

suy/rbu/leg

MACHISMO KILLS

How Spain is struggling to curb the scourge of femicide

Spain has long been seen as a frontrunner in the battle to stamp out gender violence, but in December 2022, 11 women were killed making it the deadliest month since 2008. Another seven died in January 2023.

Published: 14 February 2023 

Members of feminist movement Femen protest against the violence against women in front of the Ministry of Equality in Madrid. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)


Eleven years ago, Ester narrowly escaped death when her partner tried to throw her off a balcony at their home in northwestern Spain.

Saved by a neighbour, she went to the police. Until that point, she’d suffered years of emotional and psychological abuse but hadn’t recognised the warning signs and never reported him.

Although Ester escaped with her life, hundreds more have died since then at the hands of partners or ex-partners with a recent spike in murders prompting widespread soul-searching across the country.


In many cases, the authorities have failed to detect the undercurrent of simmering violence. And women themselves often don’t see the warning signs until it’s too late.

“There were a load of things that happened beforehand which I just didn’t recognise for what they were,” admits Ester, now 30, who did not want to give her family name.

Looking back, all the signs were there: how he increasingly isolated her from friends, remarks about her way of dressing, nights when he would force her to sleep on the floor…


Even so, she doesn’t see herself as a victim.

“Victims are those who are no longer around to talk, who were murdered,” she told AFP.

December’s bloodshed shook Spain, with Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska calling it a “social tragedy” and “not a private matter as we thought in the past”.

Inside a call centre at a secret location, about a dozen operators are manning the 016 gender violence hotline.

“016 hello: how can I help? says one operator in the purple-painted room, gently trying to calm the woman on the other end of the line.

“Is he sitting next to you right now?”

 In this file photo taken on November 25, 2021 people march during a demonstration marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Barcelona. 

(Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP)

Set up in 2007, the hotline received its highest-ever number of calls last year, with 102,000 appeals for help.

Hotline coordinator Susana Galvez told AFP the aim is to make women aware of their options.

“016 is the first step to get out of a violent situation,” she said.

Despite efforts by the authorities, who have prioritised the fight against gender-based violence since 2004 when Spain approved its groundbreaking law against it, women take “an average of eight years and eight months” to file a complaint, says state prosecutor Teresa Peramato.

And for women in rural areas, the figure is between 12 and 20 years, says this specialist in domestic violence cases.

“Very often they are the last ones to realise that they are suffering violence,” says Peramato.

“They have trivialised it and are afraid of the repercussions. They don’t trust the justice system and are economically and emotionally dependent (on their abuser).”

Like Esther, Noelia Míguez says she too was “in denial”.

In 2015, her former boyfriend tried to strangle her before stabbing her eight times.

She only survived because she pretended to be dead.

Now 29, she can clearly see the early signs of trouble — “the first humiliations, the insults, the threats, the spitting”.

Beyond the victim’s awareness of what’s going on, it’s also important to ask if the justice system itself has “failed” to protect these women, Peramato says.

In almost half — 43 percent — of the murders that occurred last year, the women had already started legal proceedings against their abuser, or he already had a police record.

When Míguez went to the police, she learned her abuser had already been convicted for attacking another former girlfriend.

Members of the feminist activist group Femen stage a protest to denounce the increased number of femicides committed in Spain in recent months, at the Retiro Park in Madrid, on January 27, 2023. (Photo by Pierre-Philippe Marcou / AFP)


Last week, Spain’s leftist government said police could warn women filing a complaint if their partner had a history of violence, although such a decision would be made on a case-by-case basis.

Ester said such a step “could save many women”.

“How many men have already been convicted or jailed for abuse and then have started a new relationship? ” she wondered.

“Until you actually realise this person is dangerous for you, a lot of things can happen.”

Since 2007, Spain has used a risk assessment programme called VioGen that has logged details of more than 700,000 cases to assess the threat level in any given situation.

But campaigners say the algorithm needs improvement, with the recent murder of a 46-year-old woman in the Canary Islands highlighting some of its shortcomings.

In late December, the woman filed a complaint against her ex-partner but later withdrew it, prompting VioGen to downgrade her risk level, local media reported.

The next day, she was killed.

Joshua Alonso — whose mother died in 2017 when her ex-partner burned down the house, killing them both — runs workshops to teach children and young people about gender violence.

Although Spain is a reference point in the fight against gender violence, more than 1,000 women have been killed since records began in 2003, meaning it still has a long way to go, he says.

“If that’s the case here and we’re a frontrunner, I don’t even want to think about what it’s like elsewhere.”

Sri Lanka bans single-use plastics to save elephants

Story by AFP • Tuesday

Sri Lanka will ban single-use plastics, the government said Tuesday, in a move that follows a series of wild elephant and deer deaths from plastic poisoning.


Shrinking habitat has led to Sri Lanka's elephants raiding villages looking for food and many suffer agonising deaths after foraging in plastic waste

© Ishara S. KODIKARA

Cabinet spokesman and media minister Bandula Gunawardana said the manufacture or sale of plastic cutlery, cocktail shakers and artificial flowers will be prohibited from June.

The move was recommended by a panel appointed 18 months ago to study the impact of plastic waste on the environment and wildlife.

Non-biodegradable plastic bags were banned in 2017 due to concerns over flash floods.

And imports of plastic cutlery, food wrappers and toys were banned two years agoafter a spate of deaths of elephants and deer in the island's northeast after foraging at open garbage tips.

Related video: Saving Sri Lanka's sacred elephants (WION)

Duration 2:50   View on Watch

Autopsies showed the animals had died after eating plastics mixed with food waste.

But local manufacture and sale of plastic products continued.

Sri Lanka's top authority on Asian elephants, Jayantha Jayewardene, welcomed the move to stop them, but told AFP the ban should be extended to biodegradable plastic bags.

"These bags are getting into the food chain of elephants and wildlife and that is not a good thing," he said.

Elephants are considered sacred and protected by law in Sri Lanka, but about 400 die a year as a result of human-elephant conflict near wildlife reserves, as do around 50 people.

Shrinking habitat has led to jumbos raiding villages looking for food and many suffer agonising deaths after foraging for food at dumps filled with plastic waste.

Dozens of wild deer died from plastic poisoning in the northeastern district of Trincomalee about five years ago, prompting the government to ban the open dumping of garbage near jungle reserves.

aj/slb/dhw/dva

Australia removes Chinese-made cameras from politicians' offices

Tue, February 14, 2023 


Australian officials said Tuesday dozens of Chinese-made security cameras would be ripped out of politicians' offices, days after the country's defence minister announced his department would remove the devices from its buildings due to security concerns.

At least 913 Chinese-made security cameras have been installed across more than 250 Australian government buildings, including the Department of Defence's facilities, according to figures released last week.

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles told national broadcaster ABC last week that all these cameras within his department's buildings would be removed, saying it was to "make sure that our facilities are completely secure".


Officials from the Department of Finance on Tuesday confirmed a further 65 closed-circuit television systems had been installed within offices used by Australian politicians.

While the department had been gradually replacing the cameras as part of a broader security upgrade, at least 40 systems still needed to be stripped out, the department said, adding that they would be replaced by April.

The CCTV cameras were not connected to the internet, and were being removed as a precaution, the department said.

Similar moves have been made in the United States and Britain, which have taken measures to stop government departments installing Chinese-made cameras at sensitive sites.

Both countries have expressed fears that Chinese companies could be forced to share intelligence collected by the cameras with Beijing's security services.

The cameras were made by companies Hikvision and Dahua, which have been blacklisted in the United States for allegedly helping the Chinese government carry out a "campaign of repression".

According to the US Department of Commerce, Hikvision and Dahua have been implicated in the "high-technology surveillance" of the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region.

The US banned imports of surveillance equipment made by the two companies in November last year, saying it posed "an unacceptable risk to national security".

Hikvision has said it was "categorically false" to paint the company as "a threat to national security".

After Marles' statements last week about removing Chinese-made cameras, Beijing accused Australia of "misusing national might to discriminate against and suppress Chinese enterprises".

"We hope Australia will provide a fair, just and nondiscriminatory environment for the normal operations of Chinese enterprises," China's foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

 

World Bank President, Dogged by Climate Questions, Will Step Down Early

David Malpass, under fire for months by critics who accused him of climate denialism, said he would resign in June, a year before his term ends.

David Malpass was nominated in 2019 by President Donald J. Trump.

Credit...Patrick Semansky/Associated Press


By David Gelles
Gelles questioned the World Bank president about his views on climate change at a live event in New York in September.

Feb. 15, 2023

David Malpass, the embattled president of the World Bank, said on Wednesday that he would step down by June, roughly a year before his term expires.

Mr. Malpass, who was nominated in 2019 for a five-year term by President Donald J. Trump, has overseen an organization that lends billions of dollars each year to poor countries grappling with health crises, hunger, conflict and a warming planet.

But last September he came under fire for his own views on climate change. When asked if he accepted the overwhelming scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels was causing global temperatures to rise, he demurred. “I’m not a scientist,” he said.

The exchange, during a live interview at a New York Times event, set off a slow-motion public relations crisis for Mr. Malpass that came to a head on Wednesday when he said he would resign from his role by June 30.

“Having made much progress, and after a good deal of thought, I’ve decided to pursue new challenge,” Mr. Malpass, 66, said in a statement that was issued shortly after he informed the board of the bank as well as senior staff about his intention to resign.

Asked about the reason for his early departure, Mr. Malpass said in a text message that he was “very proud of my over four years of hard, successful work here.”

“I’m leaving on my own schedule, having managed effectively through multiple global crises,” he said.

During his tenure, Mr. Malpass led the bank through global recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, which upended the world economy.

The departure of Mr. Malpass is likely to add new urgency to sweeping changes that were already underway at the World Bank. It will also give President Biden, who came to office with an ambitious climate agenda, the opportunity to install a leader whose term will stretch until 2028.

For years, the bank has been criticized for being insufficiently responsive to the needs of countries that have been battered by increasingly severe weather made worse by climate change, and for a lending model that burdens poor nations with heavy debt.

Last year, calls for reform at the World Bank as well as its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, picked up steam, leading many of the bank’s major shareholders, including the United States, France and Germany, to call for change. At the United Nations climate talks in Egypt in November, the prospect of an overhaul to the two institutions became a focus of the world leaders in attendance.

Mr. Malpass, who was an official at the Treasury Department during the Trump administration, came to his job at the World Bank in 2019 without much of a track record on climate issues. Environmental activists were wary, pointing to remarks he made in 2007 suggesting he did not believe there was a link between carbon emissions and global warming.

But it was not until the interview in September that critics seized on the issue and questioned Mr. Malpass’s fitness for the job.

Although he walked back his initial response and said in subsequent interviews that he accepted that fossil fuels were warming the planet, he was unable to shake the controversy.

At the United Nations climate talks in Egypt, he was confronted by a reporter for The Guardian, who asked him if he was a climate denier. Climate scientists and activists continued to call for his removal. And Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, promised to try and force out Mr. Malpass.

On Wednesday, Mr. Markey joined other critics of Mr. Malpass to applaud his resignation.

“His support for fossil fuels and abject failure to fund climate action is unacceptable,” Mr. Markey said in a statement. “Now, the World Bank must make up for his missteps and get ready to be part of the solution for a livable future.”

Former vice president Al Gore, who had also called Mr. Malpass a climate denier and campaigned for his removal, said in a statement that his departure “must be the first step toward true reform that places the climate crisis at the center of the bank’s work.”

While critics said Mr. Malpass wasn’t moving fast enough, he had been making an effort in recent months to step up. Last month, the bank produced a document known as the “evolution road map,” that outlined how it could do more to help countries facing disasters being made worse by a warming planet and other threats.

He also oversaw a growing portfolio of loans designed to help countries adapt to climate change and transition to renewable power. In November, for example, the bank agreed to lend South Africa $440 million to help convert a coal power plant into one that will run on renewables and batteries.

Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, complimented Mr. Malpass in a statement.

“While we all must continue to raise our collective ambitions in the fight against climate change, during President Malpass’ tenure the World Bank has made important recent advances in this area,” she said.

The Treasury Department, which leads the White House’s engagement with the World Bank, will have an influential role in selecting the organization’s next leader. As the bank’s largest shareholder, the United States traditionally selects the president.

“It’s credit to him and to the Biden administration that this appeared to be a gracious exit,” said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research organization. “I think it was understood clearly that they had a certain preference when it came to the leadership bank and it wasn’t him.”

Possible replacements could include Rajiv Shah, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation; Samantha Power, the head of the United States Agency for International Development; and Indra Nooyi, the former chief executive of PepsiCo; according to global development experts.

A World Bank official said that Mr. Malpass’ early departure was most likely the result of the bank’s expanded focus on climate change and other public goods as part of the its “evolution road map.”

Mr. Malpass’s original vision was to focus on the bank’s historic mission of raising incomes in developing countries, the official said, adding that it made sense that a new leader with more “green” credentials take over for the bank’s next chapter.

Alan Rappeport contributed reporting from Washington.

David Gelles is a correspondent on the Climate desk, covering the intersection of public policy and the private sector. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter. @dgelles

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 16, 2023, Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: World Bank President, Dogged by Climate Questions, Will Leave a Year Early.

Amnesty presents 'evidence' of security forces abuses to Peru president

Wed, Feb 15, 2023,

Amnesty International on Wednesday presented evidence to Peru President Dina Boluarte that it says proves security forces used excessive and lethal force to suppress anti-government protests.

At least 48 people have died in clashes between security forces and protesters since unrest broke out on December 7, following the impeachment and arrest of former president Pedro Castillo.

"We have presented the evidence gathered... in which security forces used excessive and disproportionate, and many times lethal, force, using weapons against people protesting," said Erika Guevara, Amnesty's Americas director, following the meeting with Boluarte.

The lawyer said her report was based on information provided by authorities themselves and included 46 cases of human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions and the criminalization of protesters.

Vargas said Boluarte repeatedly insisted that she had "never given the order to use lethal force to control protesters."

The evidence presented included the testimonies of victims and family members, interviews, official reports and forensic expertise, Amnesty said.

Vargas said Boluarte listened "very attentively" to the report and committed to taking care of victims and their families.

On Tuesday, human rights organizations said they would file a criminal complaint against Boluarte, her ministers and police chiefs over the deaths of six people during a protest in the southeastern Apurimac region in December.

Public prosecutors are already investigating whether security forces murdered demonstrators in the southeastern Ayacucho region on December 15.

Demonstrators have been demanding Boluarte's resignation, the dissolution of parliament, fresh elections and a new constitution.

After peaking in January, protests have died down over the last week.

jla/pb/cjc/bc/caw