How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’

Charles Kaiser in New York
Mon, February 20, 2023 

Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

The Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said Dominion Voting Systems’ brief requesting summary judgment against Fox News for defamation – and $1.6bn – is “likely to succeed and likely to be a landmark” in the history of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Related: Fox News hosts thought Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘total BS’, court filings show

“I have never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues,” Tribe told the Guardian. “Fox and its producers and performers were lying as part of their business model.”

The case concerns Fox News’s repetition of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud, including claims about Dominion voting machines.

Tribe said the filing “establishes that Fox was not only reckless” but also that producers, owners and personalities were “deliberately lying and knew they were lying about the nature of Dominion’s machines and the supposed way they could be manipulated”.

Filed last week, the 192-page document makes it clear that senior figures at Fox News from Rupert Murdoch down knew immediately after the election that claims of voter fraud, in particular those aimed at Dominion, were false.

Tucker Carlson called the charges “ludicrous” and “off the rails”. Sean Hannity texted about “F’ing lunatics”. A senior network vice-president called one of the stories “MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS”.

But none of this knowledge prevented hosts from repeating lies about everything from imaginary algorithms shaving votes from Dominion machines to non-existent ties between the company and Venezuela.

Tribe was one of several first amendment experts to call the filing nearly unprecedented.

“This is the most remarkable discovery filing I’ve ever read in a commercial litigation,” said Scott Horton, a Columbia Law School lecturer, Harper’s Magazine contributing editor and litigator with clients including CBS and the Associated Press.

“A summary judgment motion by a plaintiff in this kind of case is almost unheard of. These suits usually fail because you can’t prove the company you’re suing knew they were spreading falsehoods. That you would have evidence they knew it was a lie is almost unheard of … in this case the sheer volume of all the email and text messages is staggering.”

Horton said Dominion’s case gets “huge benefit” from the way Fox employees “express themselves with a huge measure of hyperbole about absolutely everything”.

This is not a request to go to trial. There is no genuinely disputed fact. The defendants were deliberately lying
Laurence Tribe

Tribe agreed: “This is one of the first defamation cases in which it is possible to rule for the plaintiff on summary judgment. This is not a request to go to trial. There is no genuinely disputed fact. The defendants were deliberately lying in a manner that was per se libelous and they clearly knew it.”

When the Dominion filing was first reported, Fox News said it “mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law”.

Lawyers for Fox News claim everything their anchors said was protected by the first amendment.

Other lawyers are skeptical.

“You may have a first amendment right to report on what the president said but you have no right to validate a statement that you know to be false,” said Steven Shapiro, former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and counsel or co-counsel on more than 200 supreme court briefs.

David Korzenik is a leading libel lawyer whose clients include the Guardian. He said the Dominion case shows it “possible to prove actual malice. If particular people are shown to have believed something to be false, or to have been highly aware of its probable falsehood, and at the same time they made statements endorsing it on air, they are in play.

“You’re allowed to be biased … you’re allowed to try to make money. And people should be able to disagree with each other in a newsroom. But if Fox anchors say they don’t believe X and then turn around and endorse X on air after expressing manifest disbelief in it, they have a real problem.

“The actual malice standard is very high and it’s supposed to be … it’s a burden that can be overcome in limited but appropriate circumstances.”

•••

The biggest irony revealed by the Dominion filing is that Carlson and colleagues quickly decided the greatest threat to their network was one of the only times it reported an accurate scoop: that Arizona had gone for Biden, at 11.20pm on election night.

Donald Trump gestures after speaking on election night at the White House. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Four days later, another Murdoch property, the New York Post, asked Trump to stop the stolen election claim. Rupert Murdoch thanked the Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott, for making sure the editorial got wide distribution, according to the Dominion filing.

But later that day, as Fox executives realized they were losing viewers, the tide began to shift.

“Getting creamed by CNN!” Murdoch messaged Scott.

In a message to his producer, Carlson sounded terrified: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”

And so on 8 November Maria Bartiromo featured the Trump adviser Sidney Powell and said: “I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.”

That alternate reality would be repeated for months. Perhaps most devastating of all is Dominion’s account of what happened on 12 November, after the reporter Jaqui Heinrich “correctly factchecked [a Trump] tweet, pointing out that top election infrastructure officials said that there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Carlson was incensed. He messaged Hannity: “Please get her fired. Seriously what the fuck? Actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.”

Hannity complained to Scott, who said Heinrich had “serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted”.

By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her tweet.

Calls for change in Iran reach even Shiite heartland of Qom



Clerics walk in front of the Fatima Masumeh Shrine at the city of Qom, some 80 miles (125 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Mon, February 20, 2023 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s city of Qom is one of the country’s most important centers for Shiite Muslim clerics, packed with religious schools and revered shrines. But even here, some are quietly calling for Iran’s ruling theocracy to change its ways after months of protests shaking the country.

To be clear: Many here still support the cleric-led ruling system, which marked the 44th anniversary this month of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

This includes support for many of the restrictions that set off the protests, such as the mandatory hjjab, or headscarf, for women in public. They believe the state’s claims that Iran’s foreign enemies are the ones fomenting the unrest gripping the country.

But they say the government should change how it approaches demonstrators and women’s demands to be able to choose whether to wear an Islamic head covering or not.


“The harsh crackdown was a mistake from the beginning,” said Abuzar Sahebnazaran, a cleric who described himself as an ardent backer of the theocracy, as he visited a former residence of the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “And the youth should have been treated softly and politely. They should have been enlightened and guided.”

Qom, some 125 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran, draws millions of pilgrims each year and is home to half of the country’s Shiite clerics. Its religious institutions graduate the country’s top clerical minds, making the city a power bastion in the country. The faithful believe the city’s dazzling blue-domed Fatima Masumeh Shrine represents a route to heaven or a place to have prayers answered for their woes.

For Iran today, the woes are many.

Protests have rocked the country since September after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman who had been detained by morality police over alleged improper dress. The demonstrations, initially focused on the mandatory hijab, soon morphed into calls for a new revolution in the country.

Activists outside the country say at least 528 people have been killed and 19,600 people detained in a crackdown that followed. The Iranian government has not provided any figures.

Meanwhile, Iran faces increasing pressure abroad over enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels following the collapse of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Renewed sanctions worsen longstanding financial problems, pushing its currency — the rial — to historic lows against the dollar.

“Many protesters either had economic problems or were influenced by the internet,” Sahebnazaran said from inside Khomeini’s former home, which bore pictures of the ayatollah and Iranian flags.

Protesters have even vented their anger directly at clerics, whom they see as the foundations of the system. Some videos circulated online show young protesters running up behind clerics on the street and knocking off their turbans, a sign of their status. Those wearing a black turban claim descent directly from Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

The scattered videos are a sign of the alienation felt by some toward the clergy in a nation where, 44 years ago, clerics helped lead the revolution against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

“This was part of enemy plans, they wanted to tell people that the clerics are the reason behind all problems and high prices,” Sahebnazaran said. “But the clergy are being impacted by the inflation like the rest of the people. Many clerics live on tuition fees at the lowest economic level of society. The majority of them face the same problems as the people do.”

Seminary students receive some $50 a month, with many working as laborers or taxi drivers. Fewer than 10% of Iran’s 200,000 clerics have official posts in the government.

Sakineh Heidarifard, who voluntarily works with the morality police in Qom and actively promotes the hijab, said arresting women and forcefully taking them into police custody isn’t a good idea.

She said the morality patrols are necessary, but if they find violators they should give them a warning. “Use of force and coercion is not correct at all. We should talk to them with a soft and gentle tone, with kindness and care,” she said.

Still, she sees the hijab as a central tenet of the Islamic Republic. “We have sacrificed a lot of martyrs or blood to keep this veil,” she said. “God willing, it will never be removed from our heads.”

Changes in approach, however, are not likely to satisfy those calling for the wholesale rejection of the cleric-run government. Politicians in the reform movement for years have been urging change within the theocratic system to no avail, and many protesters have lost patience.

Also, the ever-growing economic pressure on Iran’s 80 million people may one day explode across all of society, said Alireza Fateh, a carpet salesman standing next to his empty shop in Qom’s traditional bazaar.

“Economic collapse is usually followed by political collapse ... and unfortunately this is what is happening here,” he said.

“The majority of the population ... still have a little left in their bank accounts. But someday they will take to streets too, someday soon. Soon the poor, those who can’t make ends meet, will take to streets definitely.”

Biden’s Plan to End the Border Crisis Is Already Working

David J. Bier, Alex Nowrasteh
Sun, February 19, 2023 

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters

Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, United States Border Patrol has had about 4.7 million encounters with about three million individual illegal crossers along the Southwest border.

It is a chaotic mess. Border Patrol is overwhelmed. Migrants are dying en route or perishing at the hands of smugglers and cartels. But that chaos is already dramatically on the decline, as President Biden’s Jan. 5 immigration actions were the first major step in decades to get the border under control.

Biden announced that immigrants with U.S. sponsors from four major origin countries could apply to come legally to the United States on a status called humanitarian parole. And according to the January immigration figures released late last week, Biden’s plan is already working.


Republican-led States Are Suing to Expel Legal Immigrants at the Border

In December 2022, the last full month before humanitarian parole, Border Patrol had 84,176 encounters with migrants from those four countries which accounted for over 36 percent of all encounters that month at the U.S.-Mexico border. In January, the number had already dropped to 11,909—an 86 percent decline. As a result, overall U.S.-Mexico border encounters are down 42 percent.

This was similar to the decline in Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion showing up at the Southwest border in Spring 2022 after a similar program was announced. Their numbers dropped from 20,118 in April 2022 to 375 in May, a 98 percent reduction, after the Uniting for Ukraine parole program allowed them to come directly from abroad with a U.S. sponsor.

The Ukrainian program was the model for Biden’s Latin American humanitarian parole and it’s having similarly dramatic effects on improving border security.

The Biden administration isn’t solely responsible for that border chaos, as he inherited a legal immigration system decimated by his predecessor. Further, the labor market has recovered from the pandemic with unemployment at a low rate of 3.5 percent and private job openings reaching more than nine million for much of his administration.

On the other hand, it took the Biden administration about 18 months to fix the legal immigration system, and his administration sent mixed messages to the world about asylum and entry at the U.S. border.

But January 5, 2023 was a conceptual break from the past. The Biden administration announced a plan framed as additional immigration enforcement, but its most important aspects expand legal migration to the U.S. Using a power that Congress gave presidents in 1952 called humanitarian parole, Biden is allowing 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti to legally come to the U.S. each month.

DeSantis’ Migrant Stunt Is Kidnapping by Another Name

The migrants must have a U.S. sponsor and meet health and security standards. Once here, they receive a two-year residency permit—which could be extended—and they can apply for a work permit. They have almost no access to public benefits. If the numbers admitted under humanitarian parole are anything close to 30,000 people per month and the program lasts for the rest of his administration, this will be the single biggest immigration liberalization since the Immigration Act of 1965.

From a border security perspective, the goal of humanitarian parole is to incentivize migrants to apply from their home countries (or neighboring countries), get prior approval to enter, and then fly to the United States instead of paying smugglers to come to the border.

The Biden plan also requires anyone caught entering illegally from these countries be sent back to Mexico, but this aspect of the plan is less important because of the new legal option. Critics of the plan miss the forest for the trees; directly applying from their home countries means asylum seekers won’t have to spend thousands of dollars on being smuggled to the border or walking through brutal terrain like the Darien Gap, all while trying to avoid criminals, cartels, and corrupt officials along the way.

Still, humanitarian parole isn’t perfect. The numbers need to be greater than 30,000 per month, so residents of these countries aren’t discouraged from applying. The Latin American parolees need to have automatic work authorization without applying for a separate work permit (known as an EAD or employment authorization document). The Biden administration needs to reinstitute a $575 fee for each humanitarian parole application so the process doesn’t strain U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency that relies on fees to process immigrants.

Here’s the Very Simple Way to End the Chaos at the Border

But most importantly, the Biden administration needs to extend humanitarian parole to every country south of Mexico with large numbers of migrants showing up at the border. It can start with adding Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru, because they are the largest sending countries.

The Biden administration has turned a massive flow of illegal immigrants into a smaller flow of legal immigrants using a 71-year-old legal power granted to him by Congress. Migrants on humanitarian parole are legal migrants, lawfully allowed to live and work in the United States.

By extending humanitarian parole to other countries, increasing the numbers, attaching work authorization to parole, and reinstituting normal immigration fees, President Biden can be the first president to gain control of the border in generations.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

U.S. Immigrant group threatens to sue over change to asylum policy



Lauren Sforza
Mon, February 20, 2023 

An immigrant advocacy group is threatening to sue the Biden administration over its anticipated plans to change U.S. asylum policy, which is expected to be announced in the coming weeks, NBC News reported on Monday.

If adopted, the new rule would prohibit migrants from seeking asylum in the United States if they did not initially attempt to apply for it from the country they were coming from. Migrants would not be eligible for the program if they cross an international border without applying first.

Director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center Keren Zwic said that her organization and its partner groups will fight the expected charges in court, saying that the new rule, which comes as President Biden has faced unrelenting GOP criticism over his handling of the southern border, would not survive a legal challenge if it was enacted.

“If the proposed asylum ban rule does what we expect it to do — unlawfully deprive access to asylum based on manner of entry and/or transit route, it would be invalid like the similar Trump administration rules that were found unlawful by federal courts,” she reportedly said.

Four senior Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News that the new rule is expected to be formally announced in the coming weeks as Border Patrol sets up more phone booths to be used for remote interviews to determine whether a migrant is eligible for asylum. The officials said the new policy would quickly expel those who do not meet the qualifications, and that the policy would wind up preventing many migrants from Central America attempting to claim asylum, according to NBC News.

Nearly 300 advocacy groups signed a letter to Biden last month calling on his administration not to adopt the changes.

“Your administration’s announcement of plans to establish a presumption of asylum ineligibility for individuals who do not use ‘established pathways to lawful migration’ and do not apply for protection in countries of transit advances the agenda of the Trump administration, which repeatedly sought to impose similar asylum bans,” the groups wrote in their letter.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to critics of the asylum rule who say it is an “asylum ban” in comments to reporters last month.

“But it is not a ban at all, and it is markedly different than what the Trump administration proposed,” he said at the time. “What we are trying to do is draw people in a safe and orderly way, which is not the case now.”

The Hill.

Darkened plane, silent overnight train: how Biden got to Kyiv

Agence France-Presse
February 20, 2023

Biden ended the day back in Poland after another long train ride and was set to travel to Warsaw. (Evan Vucci / POOL/AFP)

President Joe Biden's surprise visit Monday morning to wartime Kyiv began in the dead of night at a military airport hangar outside Washington.

At 4:00 am (0900 GMT) Sunday -- unbeknown to the world's media, the Washington political establishment or American voters -- the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757, known as a C-32.

The plane, a smaller version of the one US presidents normally use on international trips, was parked well away from where Biden would usually board. And a telling detail: the shade on every window had been pulled down.

Fifteen minutes later, Biden, a handful of security personnel, a small medical team, close advisors, and two journalists who had been sworn to secrecy, took off en route to a war zone.

The US president is perhaps the most constantly scrutinized person on the planet.

Members of the press follow Biden wherever he goes -- whether to church or international summits. Every word he says in public is recorded, transcribed and published.

In this case, though, the usual pool of reporters, which for foreign trips would compromise 13 journalists from radio, TV, photo and written press organizations, was cut to one photographer and one writer.

The reporter, Sabrina Siddiqui from The Wall Street Journal, revealed -- once allowed by the White House to publish details -- that she and the photographer were summoned to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington at 2:15 am.

Their phones were confiscated -- not to be returned until Biden finally arrived in the Ukrainian capital about 24 hours later.

They flew for about seven hours from Washington to the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, for refueling. Here too, the window shades stayed down and they did not leave the plane.

The next flight was to Poland, landing in Rzeszow–Jasionka Airport. This may be a Polish airport, but since the Ukraine war it has also become an international hub for the US-led effort to arm the Ukrainians, funneling billions of dollars of weaponry and ammunition.

'Good to be back'

Up to this point, Siddiqui and the photographer, the Associated Press' Evan Vucci, had not seen Biden himself. That didn't change at the airport or when they got into a motorcade of SUVs.

Reporters traveling with Biden often go in motorcades, but something was very different about this one: no sirens or anything else to announce that the US president was headed to Przemysl Glowny -- the Polish train station near the Ukrainian border.

It was already 9:15 pm local time as they pulled up at a train. The journalists were told to board, still without laying eyes on Biden.

Running a route that has brought untold quantities of aid into Ukraine and untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians fleeing the other way, the train had about eight cars. Most of the people aboard, Siddiqui said, were "heavy security."

Biden is an avowed train buff.

He loves recounting his years of commuting by rail between Washington and home in Delaware when he was a senator, bringing up two young sons after their mother died in a car accident. One of his nicknames is "Amtrak Joe."

This 10-hour trip into Ukraine, though, was unlike any taken by a modern US president -- journeying into an active war zone where, unlike presidential visits to Afghanistan or Iraq, US troops are not the ones providing security.

The train rolled into Kyiv with the rising sun.

Biden, who had last visited the Ukrainian capital when he was vice president under Barack Obama disembarked at about 8:07 am.

"It's good to be back in Kyiv," he said.

Sneaking a president from DC to Kyiv without anyone noticing

President Joe Biden, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hug as they say goodbye at the Memorial Wall of Fallen Defenders of Ukraine in Russian-Ukrainian War, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 20, 2023. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

EVAN VUCCI, JOHN LEICESTER and ZEKE MILLER
Mon, February 20, 2023 

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Joe Biden’s motorcade slipped out of the White House around 3:30 a.m. Sunday. No big, flashy Air Force One for this trip -– the president vanished into the darkness on an Air Force C-32, a modified Boeing 757 normally used for domestic trips to smaller airports.

The next time he turned up — 20 hours later — it was in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine.

Biden’s surprise 23-hour visit to Ukraine on Monday was the first time in modern history that a U.S. leader visited a warzone outside the aegis of the U.S. military — a feat the White House said carried some risk even though Moscow was given a heads-up.

Over the next five hours, the president made multiple stops around town — ferried about in a white SUV rather than the presidential limousine — without any announcement to the Ukrainian public that he was there. But all that activity attracted enough attention that word of his presence leaked out well before he could get back to Poland, which was the original plan. Aides at the White House were surprised the secret held as long as it did.

But Russia knew what the Ukrainian public did not. U.S. officials had given Moscow notice of Biden's trip.

The president had been itching since last year to join the parade of other Western officials who have visited Kyiv to pledge support standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the capital.

Biden's planned trip to Warsaw, Poland, and the Presidents' Day holiday provided an obvious opening to tack on a stop in Kyiv. A small group of senior officials at the White House and across U.S. national security agencies set about working in secret for months to make it happen, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday. Biden only gave the final sign-off Friday.

Sullivan said the trip “required a security, operational, and logistical effort from professionals across the U.S. government to take what was an inherently risky undertaking and make it a manageable risk.”

Once Biden was secreted aboard the Air Force jet, the call sign “SAM060,” for Special Air Mission, was used for the plane instead of the usual “Air Force One.” It was parked in the dark with the window-shades down, and took off from Joint Base Andrews at 4:15 a.m. Eastern time.

After a refueling stop in Germany, where the president was kept aboard the aircraft, Biden’s plane switched off its transponder for the roughly hour-long flight to Rzeszow, Poland, the airport that has served as the gateway for billions of dollars in Western arms and VIP visitors into Ukraine. From there, he boarded a train for the roughly 10-hour overnight trip to Kyiv.

He arrived in the capital at 8 a.m. Monday, was greeted by Ambassador Bridget Brink and entered his motorcade for the drive to Mariinsky Palace. Even while he was on the ground in Ukraine, flights transporting military equipment and other goods were continuing unabated to Rzeszow from Western cities.

Meanwhile, in Kyiv, many main streets and central blocks were cordoned off without explanation. People started sharing videos of long motorcades of cars speeding along streets where access was restricted — the first clues that Biden had arrived.

Biden traveled with a far smaller than usual retinue: Sullivan, deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and the director of Oval Office operations, Annie Tomasini. They were joined by his Secret Service detail, the military aide carrying the so-called “nuclear football,” a small medical team and the official White House photographer.

Only two journalists were on board instead of the usual complement of 13. Their electronic devices were powered off and turned over to the White House for the duration of the trip into Ukraine. A small number of journalists based in Ukraine were summoned to a downtown hotel on Monday morning to join them, not informed that Biden was visiting until shortly before his arrival.

Even with Western surface-to-air missile systems bolstering Ukraine’s defenses, it was rare for a U.S. leader to travel to a conflict zone where the U.S. or its allies did not have control over the airspace.

The U.S. military does not have a presence in Ukraine other than a small detachment of Marines guarding the embassy in Kyiv, making Biden’s visit more complicated than visits by prior U.S. leaders to war zones.

“We did notify the Russians that President Biden will be traveling to Kyiv,” Sullivan told reporters. “We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes.” He declined to specify the exact message or to whom it was delivered but said the heads-up was to avoid any miscalculation that could bring the two nuclear-armed nations into direct conflict.

While Biden was in Kyiv, U.S. surveillance planes, including E-3 Sentry airborne radar and an electronic RC-135W Rivet Joint aircraft, were keeping watch over Kyiv from Polish airspace.

The sealing off of Kyiv roads that are usually humming with traffic brought an eerie calm to the center of the capital. It was so quiet that crows could be heard cawing as Biden and Zelenskyy walked from their motorcade to the gold-domed St. Michael’s Cathedral under skies as blue as the outer walls of the cathedral itself.

“Let’s walk in and take a look,” Biden said, wearing his trademark aviator sunglasses against the glare. The presidents disappeared inside as heavily armed soldiers stood guard outside.

Cathedral bells chirped at the stroke of 11:30 a.m. followed shortly by air raid alarms, at 11:34 a.m., just before the men reemerged. The sirens were first a distant howl rising over the city, followed seconds later by alarms from mobile phone apps wailing from people’s pockets.

Those alarms are voiced by “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill, and his Luke Skywalker voice urged people to take cover, warning: “Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.”

The two leaders walked at a measured pace with no outward signs of concern through the cathedral's arched front gate onto the square in front, where the rusting hulks of destroyed Russian tanks and other armored vehicles have been stationed as grim reminders of the war.

When the square isn’t blocked off, as it was during the leaders’ visit, people come to look at the vehicles, many taking selfies.

Biden appeared to pay the hulks no mind as he and Zelenskyy followed behind honor guards carrying two wreaths to the wall of remembrance honoring Ukrainian soldiers killed since 2014, the year Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Russian-backed fighting erupted in eastern Ukraine.

It was only then that the first images of Biden in the capital popped up on Ukrainian social media and the secret visit became global news.

“He is like an example of a president who is not afraid to show up in Ukraine and to support us,” said Kyiv resident Myroslava Renova, 23, after Biden’s visit became known.

Biden headed to the U.S. Embassy for a brief stop before departing the country by train back to Poland aboard a well-appointed, wood-paneled train car with tightly drawn curtains, a dining table and a leather sofa.

The all-clear notice, also voiced by Hamill, sounded at 1:07 p.m., as Biden's train was pulling away from the station.

“The air alert is over," Hamill said. “May the force be with you.”

___

Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci reported from aboard Biden's aircraft and in Kyiv. Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Nicolae Dumitrache in Kyiv contributed.

 

Struggling US companies are deliberately exaggerating how much money they expect to make – and that could lead to an economic crash


George Glover
Mon, February 20, 2023 

Most speculative-grade bond issuers exaggerate their earnings outlook, according to new analysis by S&P Global.Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

As many as 97% of companies that issue poorly-rated bonds fell short of earnings forecasts made in 2019, according to S&P Global.

They've likely been deliberately exaggerating a key metric known as Ebitda.

The juiced-up earnings increase the risk that the companies will fail to repay their debt.

Most low-rated bond issuers are probably exaggerating their earnings outlook, according to a new study – raising the risk of widespread defaults or even a "black swan"-type event.

S&P Global analyzed every speculative-grade company that announced an acquisition in 2019 and found that all but 3% of them had failed to hit their target for a key earnings metric known as Ebitda the following year.

Ebitda, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, is used by many companies as a measure of their core profitability – but S&P Global said its latest findings show that the metric is often abused by smaller companies.

"Most U.S. speculative-grade corporate issuers cannot come close to achieving the earnings, debt, and leverage projections presented in their marketing materials at deal inception," a team of credit analysts led by Olen Honeyman said.

"Our study is a reminder that, in general, Ebitda adjustments do not provide an accurate picture of future earnings," they added.

Speculative-grade companies are designated by ratings agencies like S&P Global, Moody's Analytics or Fitch Ratings as the bond issuers that are least likely to be able to repay their debt.

As many as 93% of speculative-grade issuers that announced deals in 2017 and 96% that announced deals in 2018 also failed to meet their Ebitda targets a year later, according to Honeyman's team.

Companies that aren't profitable can't repay bondholders – so S&P Global's findings highlight the elevated risk of a potential fixed-income market disruptions.

"Companies consistently overestimate debt repayment," the agency said.

"Together, these effects meaningfully underestimate actual future leverage and credit risk," the strategists added. "They also contribute to incremental event risk."

S&P Global isn't the first organization to be skeptical about Ebitda.

The Securities and Exchange Commission requires listed companies to show how they worked out an overall Ebitda figure and forbids them from reporting the metric on a per-share basis.

Sixth Street Partners co-founder Alan Waxman also warned in 2019 that so-called "fake Ebitda" would likely worsen the next economic crash.

Analysis-Looming U.S. default risk prompts investors to cut some debt exposure


U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington

Mon, February 20, 2023 
By Davide Barbuscia and Saeed Azhar

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bond investors are starting to trim holdings of U.S. debt to brace for a possible government default that they see as highly unlikely but potentially seismic for financial markets around the world.

The U.S. Treasury hit its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit last month. Unless congress raises or suspends that cap, the government could begin to default on bonds that underpin the global financial system and are considered some of the safest investments.

Some bond managers have started to adjust short-term exposure to Treasuries to avoid losses during the period when the government may exhaust its ability to pay its bills. Making preparations for a potential default is tricky, partly due to uncertainty over how much revenue the Treasury will collect from Americans filing income taxes in April.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc's asset management arm is minimizing its exposure to Treasuries that could be affected by the political standoff.

"You have to be thinking about what instruments you own, what maturities," said Ashish Shah, chief investment officer for public investing at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), which oversees more than $2 trillion. "Just because you own an instrument like a T-bill doesn't mean that you sit there and let it mature -- you may want to trade out of it."

Investors need to actively manage their positions during a prolonged turbulent period in which borrowing negotiations could disrupt markets, Shah said. The Federal Reserve's path of interest-rate increases further complicates the situation, said Shah.

Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the government could only pay its bills through early June without increasing the limit, but some analysts have predicted that it will be the third or fourth quarter before the government exhausts its cash and borrowing capacity. The Congressional Budget Office warned it could occur between July and September.

The Treasury bills yield curve indicates investors are demanding higher returns to hold debt due in August, signaling that it is perceived to be riskier than other maturities.

Wider spreads between Treasury bill yields and matched-maturity overnight index swap (OIS) rates - a gauge for future policy rates - in mid-August reflect views that bills maturing then carry a higher risk of a missed payment, said Jonathan Cohn, head of rates trading strategy at Credit Suisse in New York.

"A kink (in the Treasury bill curve) has become evident through mid-August where the latest 6-month bill issues mature," he said.

Graphic: Treasury bills curve, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/xmpjkrzbwvr/Z7FWt-treasury-bills-curve.png

Standoffs over the debt limit in the last decade have largely been resolved without causing major financial turmoil. But Republican lawmakers with a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives could resist a compromise with Democratic President Joe Biden, which in turn could roil markets.

Bond investors are navigating uncertainty around what they're calling the X-date, when the government can no longer meet its payments. An actual default is considered an event with a low probability but potentially high impact. It could send shockwaves through global markets and raise borrowing costs for both the U.S. government and corporations.

"The probability of a default is very low, but I'm okay telling my clients to avoid T bills with a six-month maturity ... That is probably the most concrete way in which we're approaching this," said Ed Al-Hussainy, senior interest rate strategist at Columbia Threadneedle.

Al-Hussainy may also buy Japanese yen, because a U.S. default would likely challenge the safe-haven status of the U.S. dollar and spur investors to seek protection in other currencies, he said.

(Reporting by Davide Barbuscia and Saeed Azhar; Editing by Lananh Nguyen and David Gregorio)

Panic as Turkey, Syria rocked again by 6.3M earthquake


Aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Hatay

Mon, February 20, 2023 

By Ali Kucukgocmen and Henriette Chacar

ANTAKYA, Turkey (Reuters) -A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck southern Turkey near the Syrian border late on Monday, setting off panic and further damaging buildings two weeks after the country's worst earthquake in modern history left tens of thousands dead.

Two Reuters reporters said the tremors were strong and lasting, damaging buildings and leaving dust in the night air in central Antakya city, where it was centred. It was also felt in Egypt and Lebanon, Reuters reporters said.

The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said the tremor struck at a shallow depth of 2 km (1.2 miles).

Police patrolled Antakya while ambulances rushed to the quake-hit area near the city center. Two people fainted, while others filled the streets around the central park making emergency calls on cell phones.

Reuters saw Turkish rescue teams running around on foot after the latest quake to check on residents, most of whom were living in temporary tents after the tremors two weeks ago.

Muna Al Omar, a resident, said she was in a tent in a park in central Antakya when the earthquake hit.

"I thought the earth was going to split open under my feet," she said, crying as she held her 7-year-old son in her arms.

"Is there going to be another aftershock?" she asked.

The two larger earthquakes that hit on Feb. 6, which also rocked neighbouring Syria, left more than a million homeless and killed far more than the latest official tally of 46,000 people in both countries.

Smaller tremors have jolted the region in the last two weeks but the Monday quake was the largest since Feb. 6.

"It was very strong. It jolted us out of our places," said Burhan Abdelrahman, who was walking out of his tent in a camp in Antakya city centre when the earthquake struck.

"I called relatives in Syria, Adana, Mersin, Izmir, everywhere, to check on them."

Turkey's disaster agency AFAD urged residents to stay away from the Mediterranean coast over a possible 50-centimetre rise in waters due to the quake.

Videos posted on social media, unverified by Reuters, showed passengers at Antakya airport taking cover in panic as the quake jolted the glass building.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Alexander Smith and Jonathan Spicer)

Another earthquake hits Turkey-Syria border, leaves six dead

By Reuters


ANTAKYA, Turkey – Six people were killed in the latest earthquake to strike the border region of Turkey and Syria, authorities reported on Tuesday, two weeks after a larger one killed more than 47,000 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes.

Monday’s quake, this time with a magnitude of 6.4, was centered near the southern Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said there had been 90 aftershocks. Six thousand tents were sent to the area overnight for residents alarmed by the new quake.

The Hatay provincial governor’s building, already damaged in the Feb. 6 quakes, collapsed in the latest tremor, television footage showed.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 294 people had been injured, with 18 seriously hurt and transported to hospitals in Adana and Dortyol.

REUTERS

Patients were evacuated from some health facilities that had remained in operation after the massive tremors two weeks ago, as cracks had emerged in the buildings, Koca said on Twitter.

In Samandag, where AFAD had reported one person dead on Monday, residents said more buildings had collapsed, but that most of the town had already fled after the initial earthquakes. Mounds of debris and discarded furniture lined the dark, abandoned streets.

Muna Al Omar said she had been in a tent in a park in central Antakya when the ground started heaving again.

“I thought the earth was going to split open under my feet,” she said on Monday, crying as she held her 7-year-old son.

An elderly man reacts after a new 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Hatay, Turkey on Feb. 20, 2023.ERDEM SAHIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

A destroyed apartment block is seen on Feb. 20, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey.Getty Images
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A man walks down a street amid rubble from destroyed buildings on Feb. 20, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey.Getty Images

Men sit and talk in front of destroyed properties in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Antakya, Hatay, Turkey, on Feb. 20, 2023.

U.S. HELP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on a visit to Turkey on Monday that Washington would help “for as long as it takes” as rescue operations in the wake of the Feb. 6 quake wound down, and the focus turned to shelter and reconstruction work.

The death toll from the Feb. 6 quakes rose to 41,156 in Turkey, AFAD said on Monday, and was expected to climb further, with 385,000 apartments known to have been destroyed or seriously damaged and many people still missing.

President Tayyip Erdogan said construction work on nearly 200,000 apartments in 11 provinces of Turkey would begin next month.

The bedroom is seen of a destroyed apartment on Feb. 20, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey.Getty Images

Total U.S. humanitarian assistance to support the earthquake response in Turkey and Syria has reached $185 million, the U.S. State Department said.

Among the survivors of the earthquakes are about 226,000 pregnant women in Turkey and 130,000 in Syria women who urgently need access to health services, the U.N. sexual and reproductive health agency has said.

Around 39,000 are due to deliver in the next month, and many are sheltering in camps or exposed to freezing temperatures and struggling to get food or clean water.
SYRIA AID

In Syria, already shattered by more than a decade of civil war, most deaths have been in the northwest, where the United Nations said 4,525 people were killed. The area is controlled by insurgents at war with President Bashar al-Assad, complicating aid efforts.

Members of rescue teams work on a collapsed building after a new 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Hatay, Turkey on Feb. 20, 2023.ERDEM SAHIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Syrian officials say 1,414 people were killed in areas under government control.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said a convoy of 14 of its trucks had entered northwestern Syria from Turkey on Sunday to assist in rescue operations.

The World Food Program has also been pressuring authorities in that region to stop blocking access for aid from Syrian government-controlled areas.

A worker watches the digger as he stands on the rubble from destroyed buildings as she awaits the body of her relatives on Feb. 20, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey.Getty Images
A man walks in front of rubble from destroyed buildings on Feb. 20, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey.Getty Images
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A man holds his mobile phone near destroyed structures from a car in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Antakya, Hatay province, Turkey, on Feb. 20, 2023.REUTERS
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As of Monday morning, 197 trucks loaded with U.N. humanitarian aid had entered northwest Syria through two border crossings, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

SEE ALSO

Turkish officials to largely end search for victims from earthquake as death toll tops 46K

Thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey have returned to their homes in northwest Syria to contact relatives caught up in the disaster.

At the Turkish Cilvegozu border crossing, hundreds of Syrians lined up starting early on Monday to cross.

Mustafa Hannan, who dropped off his pregnant wife and 3-year-old son, said he saw about 350 people waiting.

The 27-year-old car electrician said his family was leaving for a few months after their home in Antakya collapsed, taking up a pledge by authorities allowing them to spend up to six months in Syria without losing the chance to return to Turkey.

“I’m worried they won’t be allowed back,” he said. “We’ve already been separated from our nation. Are we going to be separated from our families now too? If I rebuild here but they can’t return, my life will be lost.”

Analysis-Hasty rebuild could leave Turkey at risk of another quake disaster

Aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Hatay

Mon, February 20, 2023
By Ceyda Caglayan and Can Sezer

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's plan to rebuild quickly after devastating earthquakes rocked the country risks courting another disaster unless urban planning and building safety are carefully re-considered, architects and engineers say.

Days after Turkey's worst earthquake in modern history, Erdogan vowed to rebuild the southern disaster zone within a year, an undertaking conservative estimates put at $25 billion and others expect to be far higher.

Authorities say more than 380,000 units in 105,794 buildings are in urgent need of demolition or have collapsed, out of 2.5 million structures across the region.

A building boom has defined Erdogan's two-decade rule, during which his government has collected some $38 billion in quake-linked taxes, according to Reuters calculations. The tax, still in place, could provide quick financing to start rebuilding efforts.

Facing elections by June, Erdogan's government has endured a wave of criticism over both its response to the devastation and what many Turks say were years of policies that led to tens of thousands of buildings being so easily destroyed.

Erdogan had said the government would cover rents of those who leave quake-hit cities. "We will rebuild these buildings within one year and hand them back to citizens," he said.

But experts believe he needs to carefully enforce seismic-safety standards and build safer structures in the area, which straddles one of three faultlines criss-crossing Turkey.

"It is not only necessary to replace the demolished buildings, but also to re-plan the cities based on scientific data such as not to build on faultlines and to learn lessons from past mistakes," said Esin Koymen, former head of Istanbul Chamber of Architects.

"The first priority is new planning, not new building."

OVER 1 MILLION HOMELESS

The quakes on Feb. 6, which also hit neighbouring Syria, left more than a million homeless and killed far more than the latest official tally of 46,000 people in both countries.

They devastated southern Turkey in the dead of winter, with overnight temperatures near freezing, leaving many emergency tents inadequate for the homeless. More than 2 million others have evacuated the region that was home to more than 13 million.

The earthquakes revealed the fragility of Turkey's infrastructure, experts said, given they ravaged both modern and ancient buildings including hospitals, mosques, churches and schools.

Some now worry the government's ambitious timeframe leaves little time to fix past mistakes.

"When they say 'we start the construction in a month, we finish it in a year', without the city planning work, frankly, this means that the disaster we are experiencing has not been noticed," said Nusret Suna, deputy head of the Chamber of Civil Engineers.

"It takes months to make city plans ... it is very wrong to ignore those plans."

Urbanisation Minister Murat Kurum said last week the government would consider detailed geological surveys in its city reconstruction plans, and that tenders would be held.

"FRIENDLY COMPANIES"

The bill to rebuild houses, transmission lines and infrastructure is around $25 billion, or 2.5% of GDP, U.S. bank JPMorgan said in a report. Another report from business association Turkonfed estimated damages to housing at $70.8 billion.

And analysts say costs could overshoot initial estimates.

Over 20 years in power, Erdogan used major real estate projects to showcase Turkey's rising prosperity. Public and private builds have boosted jobs and new housing stock, and helped his opinion poll ratings.

The looming presidential and parliamentary elections, which could be delayed due to the quake, pose Erdogan's biggest political challenge to date given a cost-of-living crisis weighed heavily on Turks well before the disaster struck.

Some critics have said the state exacerbated the crisis by awarding "friendly" companies lucrative construction contracts over the years in return for political and financial support.

Pinar Giritlioglu, the Istanbul head of the Chamber of City Planners, said: "Unfortunately, the rentier system instead of science continues to rule everything."

The government has vowed to investigate anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings, and has arrested dozens of people so far.

QUAKE-PROOF BUILDINGS

Though there is no definite data on the more than 20 million buildings in the country, former Urbanisation Minister Mehmet Ozhaseki said when in office in mid-2018 that "probably more than 50% of all buildings" contravened housing regulations. The Urbanisation Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about current figures.

Opposition politicians accuse Erdogan's government of failing to enforce building regulations, and of mis-spending special taxes levied after the last major earthquake in 1999 in order to make buildings more resistant to quakes.

Erdogan has repeatedly dismissed what he calls opposition lies meant to obstruct investment.

In 2018, the government issued an amnesty for existing buildings that had broken the construction rules - for a fee, a practice also carried out under previous governments before 1999.

While state housing agency TOKI built just 1 million quake-resilient houses over past two decades, about 5% of buildings in Turkey, the private sector built slightly more than 2 million sturdy homes during the same period, according to Urbanisation Minister Kurum.

(Reporting by Ceyda Caglayan and Can Sezer; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Michael Georgy, Jonathan Spicer and Alex Richardson)

More than 350,000 pregnant women who survived Turkey-Syria earthquake need urgent healthcare

Maya Oppenheim
Mon, February 20, 2023 at 9:26 AM MST·3 min read

The agency said women are struggling to access sexual and reproductive healthcare as thousands of buildings, including hospitals and services which they support, have been destroyed or badly damaged (AP)

More than 350,000 pregnant women who survived the Turkey-Syria earthquake are in urgent need of healthcare, experts have warned.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the arm of the United Nations dedicated to sexual and reproductive health, said around 38,000 of these women are due to give birth in the next month.

Pregnant women, who have lost relatives, friends, and homes in the earthquake, are being forced to put their health at risk as they take refuge in makeshift camps where it is difficult to access food and clean water, the agency said.

It said women are struggling to access sexual and reproductive healthcare as thousands of buildings, including hospitals and services which they support, have been destroyed or badly damaged.


Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of the UNFPA, said: “Amidst all the devastation in Syria and Turkey, women and girls affected by the earthquakes must be safe and protected, and able to access quality sexual and reproductive healthcare when they need it.

“These services save lives and need to be an integral part of the response.”

Her warning comes days after a Yemeni mother gave birth to a baby girl ten hours after being pulled from the rubble by humanitarian workers at her earthquake-ravaged home in Turkey.

Faten Al Yousifi, who was 39 weeks pregnant, had already decorated her baby’s nursery and had a hospital birth bag packed when the quake hit her apartment in Malatya in the Eastern Anatolia part of Turkey. “I did not believe I was still alive,” she told the BBC.

Earlier in February, Turkey endured the deadliest earthquake in nearly 100 years, with the lives of over 40,000 people claimed and at least 4,000 people killed in neighbouring Syria. Tens of thousands more were left injured by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and over six million people have been displaced in Turkey and in bordering Syria.

ActionAid, a leading humanitarian NGO, recently warned women and girls are among those hardest hit by the recent earthquake with their circumstances becoming “increasingly alarming”.

The organisation raised concerns for the safety of women and girls seeking refuge in temporary shelters, as well as warning there are no resources for those who are pregnant, breastfeeding or on their periods.

Racha Nasreddine, regional director of ActionAid Arab Region, said: ‘‘This is a shocking situation, after 12 years of conflict in Syria, women and girls internally displaced in Syria and living as refugees in Turkey were already in a very vulnerable situation before the earthquake and now they have had their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

“We know that women and girls often suffer the most during humanitarian emergencies. Violence against them increases and they are more at risk of being exploited.

“There’s very limited access to services like hospitals and so pregnant women are at risk of complications if they can’t receive the medical care they need.”

She warned that they will also be without sanitary items while on their period and will have “very little privacy”.