China lends Pakistan further $700 mln to shore up FX reserves

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Chinese money to shore up critically low reserves

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More external financing needed to get an IMF deal

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PM hopes to get IMF funding soon

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International bond prices fall


By Asif Shahzad

Wed, February 22, 2023 

ISLAMABAD, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Pakistan will this week receive a new $700 million loan from China to help shore up its foreign exchange reserves, the country's finance minister said on Wednesday, in another step to help the South Asian nation recover from an economic crisis.

The credit facility, made through the state-owned China Development Bank will boost Pakistan's forex reserves by about 20% and comes as the country is thrashing out a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to unlock funds from a $6.5 billion bailout.

"This amount is expected to be received this week by State Bank of Pakistan which will shore up its forex reserves," Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Twitter.

A finance ministry official said the loan was in addition to other facilities that China has already extended to Pakistan. The money could come as early as Thursday, he added.

China Development Bank did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was hopeful of reaching a deal with the IMF as soon as the country completes a series of steps demanded by the lender.

Addressing his cabinet, he said the government was focusing on austerity as a top priority. "Our government will utilise all resources to overcome the crisis," he said.

The receipt of external financing is one of the measures needed before the IMF signs a staff level agreement that will unlock more than $1 billion in funding, that has been suspended since late last year.

"The fact that new money is being committed to Pakistan and old loans are being rolled over despite this, is a sign that the global community is committed to helping Pakistan meet its external challenges," former Pakistani central bank deputy governor Murtaza Syed told Reuters.

SINGLE LARGEST CREDITOR

Pakistan is struggling with its worst economic crisis in decades and its foreign exchange reserves, at their lowest in 10 years, are only enough to pay for less than three weeks' worth of imports. Meanwhile, fiscal adjustments demanded by the IMF are fuelling decades-high inflation.

The country's international bonds extended their decline on Wednesday with the 2027 dollar-denominated bonds dropping more than 1.2 cents in the dollar to trade just over 40 cents, Tradeweb data showed.

China is already Pakistan's single largest creditor with its commercial banks holding about 30% of its external debt. The United States, historically a close ally, said this week it was concerned about this debt, and was talking to Islamabad about the "perils" of a closer relationship with Beijing. 

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Additional Reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Miral Fahmy, Alexander Smith and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Pakistan Faces the Abyss Again. Debate Rages on Who Should Pay



Kai Schultz and Faseeh Mangi
Wed, February 22, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- People crushed trying to buy subsidized food as inflation hits a 48-year high. The country going dark from power cuts. A former leader shot in the streets.

Pakistan is teetering on a precipice, with fiscal, humanitarian and political crises bringing it ever closer to the brink. As foreign reserves plummet, covering only three weeks of imports, the country is facing its worst economic meltdown in decades — echoing the fall of Sri Lanka and Ghana, but unspooling in a nuclear-armed nation with one of the world’s biggest populations.

The South Asian state is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund again — something it’s done more than 20 times. But its predicament is far graver this time around, after deadly floods devastated millions last year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up energy prices and dark clouds gathered over the world economy.

Pakistan may also be a harbinger of similar collapses in other debt-laden countries. Its woes are reigniting an increasingly tense debate about how the rest of the world should respond — and who should foot the bill. China, Pakistan’s biggest sovereign lender, is mired in disputes with multilateral banks over which parties should take the lead in restructuring sovereign debt.

“Everybody has to take a haircut,” said Amitabh Kant, the sherpa for India’s presidency of the Group of 20, which is helping to mediate. “It can’t be that the International Monetary Fund takes a haircut and it goes to settle Chinese debt.”

From Karachi to Lahore, poorer people are bearing the brunt as inflation touches every staple. The price of baby formula is up 15% in a month. Thousands of food containers are stuck at ports as the government curbs imports to preserve its last $3 billion in foreign currency. A man was crushed to death in the southeastern Sindh province last month after a crowd rushed officials distributing subsidized flour.

Abdur Rehman, 50, said the math has become impossible for his family of four. Filling up their motorbike a single time equates to about a sixth of his 18,000 rupee (about $70) monthly salary, which he earns cutting vegetables in a kitchen that supplies food for weddings.

“How will we go to work with these fuel prices?” he asked outside a gas station in Karachi, Pakistan’s bustling commercial capital on the Arabian Sea coast. “I’ve never seen such a difficult time.”

Fuel is an especially contentious issue. In 2022, former cricket star Imran Khan, then the prime minister, reduced and froze diesel and gasoline prices. The populist gesture helped lay the groundwork for the current crisis.

Political turbulence and terrorism are adding to the country’s problems. Pakistan keeps replacing its finance minister, and recent militant attacks are spooking investors, who worry that extremism is taking root again. Added to the mix is a government distracted by endless conflict with ousted premier Khan, and a military that has long held too much sway over the nation’s politics. Khan, who was shot in the leg while heading a protest march in November, is pushing for fresh national elections — at a time when many Pakistanis can’t afford bread.

Making matters worse, the country has been buffeted by a climate disaster. Floods last summer inundated about a third of the nation, killing more than 1,700 people, displacing millions and cutting economic growth by half. Last month, a power outage shut down huge swatches of the country for as long as 24 hours, disrupting mobile services and plunging hospitals in rural areas into darkness.

Maleeha Lodhi, who twice served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, said many of the country’s issues are of its own making.

“The chickens have come home to roost,” she said. “Decades of governments living beyond their means” have caught up. “Privileged elites have overlooked the public interest.”

For years, Pakistan’s economic problems have followed a familiar pattern. A dependence on imports and a low inflow of dollars has triggered repeated balance of payment crises. The country has also taken on piles of debt that didn’t generate foreign exchange, using Chinese financing, in particular, to build things like power plants that have failed to boost sluggish export numbers.

The country needs a “hard reset,” said Monis Rahman, a prominent startup founder. “Put all politicians on a boat and send them on an extended vacation. The ‘system’ has been bastardized beyond repair.”

Still, according to Lodhi, that doesn’t mean the world should let Pakistan collapse. For one thing, the lives of more than 230 million people would be affected. Beyond that, the country’s geostrategic importance — it borders China, India, Iran and Afghanistan — must be taken into account, she said.

Its nuclear capabilities — and the risk of them falling into the wrong hands — are another obvious reason.

The IMF is on the cusp of releasing money from a stalled $6.5 billion loan program. Fund officials’ patience had been running thin as they called on the country to pass austerity measures, like removing fuel subsidies and getting more people to pay tax.

Pakistan’s new premier, Shehbaz Sharif, had been reluctant to meet all the fund’s demands in an election year, but recently Pakistan loosened restrictions on its currency, increased electricity prices and added new taxes to raise 170 billion rupees by June. Reaching a deal with the fund is all the more important because Pakistan’s allies in the Middle East have demurred on sending aid until it does.

But the amount on the table from the IMF is still pennies given Pakistan’s total debt of about $240 billion.

Other emerging economies are watching closely. Between 2010 and 2020, poorer nations’ external debt more than doubled to $860 billion, according to World Bank data. Set against a broader post-pandemic slowdown, many are no longer able to make their payments, as interest rates jump and a strong dollar cheapens their currencies. The IMF estimates that a quarter of emerging markets now face “default-like borrowing spreads.”

Economists warn of a lost decade of growth for the world’s most vulnerable countries, many of which slid deeper into poverty during the Covid years. The conditions are not dissimilar from the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, when a surge in private lending to developing nations preceded a perfect storm of external shocks — among them, Iraq’s invasion of Iran — that caused years of pain. Egypt, Ethiopia and Tajikistan are among the countries facing problems.

Analysts say Pakistan could still avert a default. Brad Setser, an economic policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the country must negotiate a “serious reprofiling” of its payments. Most of Pakistan’s external debt of around $100 billion is from multilateral and bilateral sources, including the Paris Club, a mostly Western group of lenders, the IMF and China, which holds about $30 billion. Only $8 billion of total debt is Eurobonds.

“The X factor is China,” said Murtaza Syed, a former IMF official and ex-deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan. “China is not part of the old boys’ club of the Paris Club, which used to be a very good coordinating mechanism for restructurings.”

From 2006 to 2020, the share of external debt owed to China by poorer nations surged to 18% from 2%, according to IMF data, making it the world’s largest sovereign creditor to developing countries. For the 22 members of the Paris Club, the proportion fell to 11% from 28%.

As the mix of global creditors diversifies, China has lobbied to change the system for restructuring sovereign debt, which typically exempts lending by multilaterals. The World Bank and others have rejected Beijing’s demands, jeopardizing efforts by G-20 nations this week to reach a consensus on fixes to the Common Framework. That initiative brings the Paris Club and traditional creditors around the same negotiating table with China.

The rift has delayed efforts to ease debt burdens in struggling countries like Zambia, which sought relief about two years ago but has yet to reach an agreement. At a briefing, Mao Ning, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, said a deal in Zambia “lies in the participation of multilateral financial institutions and commercial creditors in the debt-relief efforts.”

“China really needs to come to the table,” Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, said recently of the delay. “China's lack of willingness to comprehensively participate and to move in a timely way has really been a roadblock.”

Whatever the case, time is ticking for Pakistan, which is the most populous nation to waver.

The country’s credit ratings have been downgraded twice in four months by Fitch Ratings and long-term dollar bonds trade at distressed levels. Pakistan also eased controls on the rupee, which lost 15% of its value in January, the biggest monthly drop in data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1989. In dollar terms, the benchmark KSE-100 Index is near its lowest level in about a decade.

Syed said Pakistan can’t break its endless cycle of bailouts and crises without painful decisions. The nation has reached a point where its debt is simply unsustainable, he said. Restructuring may be the only way to avoid becoming another Greece — or worse.

If that becomes the accepted view, the question then is how it’s carried out.

“People are asking whether debt is going to lead to a lost decade for developing countries and emerging markets,” Syed said. “Pakistan is one of those countries. We may be the sort of canary in the coal mine for how this debt problem gets resolved, if at all.”

--With assistance from Ismail Dilawar, Akshay Chinchalkar and Ruchi Bhatia.

UK

Hydrogen not a realistic replacement for natural gas, warn Lords

Matt Oliver

THE TELEGRAPH
Tue, February 21, 2023

Hydrogen

Heating millions of homes with hydrogen instead of natural gas is unrealistic, peers have warned, telling ministers to focus on promoting heat pumps instead.

In a sharply-critical report, a House of Lords panel on Wednesday accused the Government of undermining the national rollout of heat pumps with confusing “mixed messages” about unproven alternatives.

Mass adoption of heat pumps is a key plank of the plan to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. The devices raise the temperature in people's homes by absorbing the heat from outside and compressing it.

The Government wants to see 600,000 heat pumps installed each year by 2028, compared to around 35,000 today. However, uptake has so far been slow, with many people put off by high upfront costs.

The Lords environment and climate change committee said the Government was undermining its own target with an ongoing review into whether hydrogen-powered boilers could be used for home heating. The review is “negatively affecting” demand for heat pumps, peers said, by sowing uncertainty.

Baroness Parminter, chairman of the Lords environment committee, told The Telegraph: “In heat pumps we've got a mature technology now, where there aren't any issues around safety. So why focus on hydrogen for home heating?

“The mixed messages around hydrogen are compromising the [Government’s] ability to get heat pumps into homes.”

Uncertainty over whether heat pumps or hydrogen were the solution has left plumbers and other businesses unsure of which technologies to commit to, the Baroness added.

Production of hydrogen is energy-intensive and it is unclear whether there will be enough supplies to serve millions of homes, Baroness Parminter said.

“Frankly, hydrogen is not a serious option in the short to medium term.”

The findings come after MPs warned in December that hydrogen was only likely to play a “limited role” in home heating and was “not a panacea”.

Under plans unveiled by Boris Johnson, Britain will ban the installation of new gas boilers from 2035.

Homeowners have been offered vouchers worth £5,000 each towards the cost of installing heat pumps, with ministers hoping this will spur widespread demand and help manufacturers bring down costs.

However, peers said the so-called boiler upgrade scheme was “seriously failing”.

Public apathy has left two thirds of the scheme’s £150m first year budget unused, with less than 10,000 of 30,000 available vouchers issued.

Peers said this was because heat pumps remained too expensive for most households – costing £7,000 in some cases even after the grant – and the Government had failed to advertise the scheme properly.

Promoting hydrogen-ready boilers as a possible alternative has also convinced some home owners there is little point in switching.

On Tuesday the Government said it planned to launch a marketing campaign to promote its heat pump vouchers.

Although ministers expect most households to adopt heat pumps in the long-run, critics argue they often require expensive home adaptations such as insulation.

The Energy and Utilities Alliance, which represents boiler manufacturers and some heat pump makers, estimates that up to 12 million homes may be unsuitable for heat pumps.

Mike Foster, chief executive of the Energy and Utilities Alliance, accused peers of being out-of-touch and “doubling down on a flawed policy”.

He added: “The committee is right to suggest there is a high level of misinformation around hydrogen, by publishing highly misleading conclusions around hydrogen.

“The Government’s plans for hydrogen-ready boilers are a no regrets option going forward, helping households decarbonise their homes without the £13,000 upfront cost of a heat pump.”

Industry groups Hydrogen UK and Energy UK warned against a “one size fits all policy” for home heating.

Hydrogen UK said: “A balanced approach between electrification and hydrogen, through the deployment of hydrogen distribution infrastructure, hydrogen boilers and hybrid hydrogen heat pumps, would mitigate these peaks and could bring significant system cost savings compared to pure electrification.”

GREEN CAPITALI$M

We’re not paying countries enough to save trees from deforestation. Here’s the price that would actually make a dent in climate change.

Published: Feb. 22, 2023 
By Rachel Koning Beals

A U.N. policy arm wants to raise the pricing floor intended to avoid deforestation. And the group believes it has just the price target to make that happen, it exclusively tells MarketWatch.


Men are seen on a burnt area of the Amazon rainforest in Apui, Brazil, last fall. According to one measure, hotspots in the Amazon region saw a record increase last year. Lost swaths of the Amazon are one target of carbon-credit programs, such as that pushed by the U.N.’s REDD policy arm. 

The current price applied to a forest’s carbon-absorbing benefits is set far too low to convince those cutting down trees to stop — and, accordingly, to meet global goals to slow costly climate change, a policy arm of the United Nations says.

Essentially, governments and private industry can be compensated for leaving trees in the ground, especially in mammoth tropical forest expanses such as South America’s Amazon or the trees around Africa’s Congo River. But the incentive to do so must be competitive with the perceived benefits of deforestation, which might take place to sell lumber, raise crops or graze cattle on cleared land.

U.N. officials tell MarketWatch exclusively, in conjunction with the release of a new report, that they have a price floor in mind meant to sway more stakeholders from clearing forests — and it lies well above the current incentive.

“A high-integrity forest carbon market that is expected to deliver emissions reductions at a scale and speed commensurate with the climate crisis requires a higher price to account for the cost of forest protection,” Gabriel Labbate, head of the climate-change mitigation unit with the U.N.’s Environmental Program (UNEP), tells MarketWatch.

Research indicates that price, in U.S. dollars, starts between $30 and $50 per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2), he says.

By comparison, the average price of such credits on voluntary carbon markets has increased from $3.90 per ton of CO2 in 2019 to $4.70 per ton of CO2 in 2021, figures far too low to expect the program to make a dent in slowing atmospheric warming to no more than 1.5 degrees C, as laid out in 2015’s Paris climate accord.

‘A high-integrity forest carbon market that is expected to deliver emissions reductions at a scale and speed commensurate with the climate crisis requires a higher price to account for the cost of forest protection.’— Gabriel Labbate, UNEP’s head of the climate-change mitigation unit

The United Nations Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or UN-REDD, is the advisory arm of UNEP. UN-REDD’s aim is to work with countries and the private sector to reduce forest emissions and enhance forest carbon stocks. It gives technical advice and funding already to some 65 partner countries.

What’s more, sufficient volume of payments is necessary to unlock supply and leverage demand, essentially to make this forest-carbon program perform as a healthy market that invites more participation, the officials say.

Creating robust carbon-credit markets will require greater buy-in to U.N. programs from the world’s wealthier industrial nations.

A similar theme dominated the most recent major U.N. climate conference, known as COP27 and held late last year. For the first time ever, rich nations — including a top-polluting U.S. — will pay for the climate-change damage inflicted upon poorer nations. The deal, called “loss and damage” in summit shorthand, was struck as the U.N.’s Conference of Parties, or COP27, gaveled to a close.

Read: Historic compensation fund approved at U.N. climate talks

Smaller economies are often the source of the fossil fuels, forests, minerals PICK, -1.95% and other raw materials behind the developed world’s modern conveniences and technological advancements, including many practices responsible for Earth-warming emissions. And yet the developing world shoulders the worst of the droughts, deadly heat, ruined crops and eroding coastlines that take lives and eat into economic growth.

Earth-warming greenhouse-gas emissions, such as CO2, are created when fossil fuels CL00, +0.66% are burned. But in addition to lowering the burning of coal, oil and gas NG00, +0.51%, a multipronged approach to slowing global warming also calls for finding ways to suck CO2 directly from the atmosphere, as well as capturing CO2 at the point of energy combustion.

This can be accomplished, in part, by using nature to its fullest, such as keeping carbon-absorbing oceans healthy and leaving major forests intact. Manmade technology, such as one potentially industry-changing machine from Climeworks built to pull CO2 from the open air and store it underground, is also trying to solve for this issue.

Commitments lagging

As for the forest approach, some of the expense for the incentive program comes with treating this market like a mature operation. Complying with state-of-the-art accounting and crediting standards required to achieve high-integrity benefits will also have significant cost implications, the report says.

“Despite recent articles that criticize forest carbon, or REDD+, this report shows the need for this crucial funding stream for deforestation. High-quality and high-integrity emissions reductions from REDD+ are cost effective, but they are not cheap,” Labbate and team say in the report.

The latest report follows a release last year by UN-REDD, the U.N. Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC) and the Green Gigaton Challenge (GGC). The older report found that for 2030 goals of halving industrial-world emissions to remain within reach, a one-gigaton milestone of emissions reductions from forests must be achieved no later than 2025, and yearly after that. Measured against this milestone, current public and private commitments are only at 24%.

The group also says that a bump in payment will not only make the system more durable in the long run, it will make it fairer to the groups most often faced with the choice to preserve or develop the land. For example, the U.N. team says its program can help ensure equitable participation for Indigenous people, local communities and women.

Read: Energy group blasts Big Oil for not giving just 3% of record profits to methane-emission cuts

Is this the only type of carbon-credit market?

Carbon-credit markets can work in a couple of ways. One approach is by incentivizing humans to help Mother Nature do her job, such as through the forest-credit program outlined in this report. Earth’s trees and plants pull vast amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis, incorporating some of that carbon into structures like wood. Areas that absorb more carbon than they emit are called carbon sinks.

True enough, it remains an evolving area of study. Plants can also emit the greenhouse gas during processes like respiration, when dead plants decay, or during combustion in the case of fires. Researchers are particularly interested in whether — and how — plants at the scale of an ecosystem like a forest act as sources or sinks in an increasingly warming world, NASA says in a 2021 report.

Read: President Carter was the first to put solar panels on the White House — Reagan removed them 7 years later

Another carbon-credit approach involves swapping allowances on a market so that higher-polluting companies might purchase credits from lower-polluting companies, all determined by government-set caps on how much pollution is allowed. Carbon-credit markets, which have existed in some form for years, are seen as a step short of outright bans on emissions.

In theory, prices for carbon permits would rise over the long term as governments gradually tighten the caps. The goal is to motivate polluting companies to switch to fuels with lower emissions, or to invest in low-carbon technologies, versus constantly having to pay on the market for extra allowances.

This week, the European Union marked a milestone for one of the key tools the bloc is using to meet its climate targets: A carbon credit hit a record-high €100 per metric ton.

As Barron’s notes, investors can profit from the carbon-trading market through some exchange-traded funds, but caution is warranted. Although prices should rise over time, and have taken off this year, they can be highly volatile.

Australia tells Twitter, Google to give information on handling online child abuse



Wed, February 22, 2023 
By Byron Kaye

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian regulator has sent legal letters to Twitter and Google telling them to hand over information about their efforts to stop online child abuse, drawing them into a crackdown that has already put pressure on other global tech firms.

The action by the country's e-safety commissioner keeps a spotlight on the anti-exploitation practices at Twitter under the ownership of billionaire Elon Musk, who called child protection his top priority while also laying off more than half its employees since taking over last October.

"With Elon Musk declaring child sexual abuse a top priority, this is an opportunity for him to explain what he is indeed doing," e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant told Reuters in an interview, referring to several of Musk's tweets.

She said it was in Twitter's interests to show that it was acting effectively to eradicate child sexual abuse material, otherwise advertisers could turn away from the company.

Inman Grant, who had served as a public policy director for Twitter until 2016, said the responses of larger tech firms, coupled with reports of looser content moderation at Twitter since Musk took over, prompted her to take action.

Twitter closed its Australian office after Musk's buyout so there was no local representative to respond to Reuters, and a request for comment sent to the San Francisco-based company's media email address was not immediately answered.

Apart from writing to Twitter, the commissioner also sent letters to Alphabet Inc's Google, owner of YouTube and the file storage unit Google Drive, and China's TikTok.

Google's senior manager of government affairs and public policy Samantha Yorke said abuse material had no place on the company's platforms and "we utilise a range of industry standard scanning techniques including hash-matching technology and artificial intelligence to identify and remove (child abuse material) that has been uploaded to our services".

TikTok's policy manager for Australia Jed Horner said in a statement the company had a zero-tolerance approach to dissemination of abuse material with more than 40,000 safety professionals globally "who develop and enforce our policies, and build processes and technologies to detect, remove or restrict violative content at scale".

Under new laws in Australia, the e-safety commissioner, an office set up to protect internet users, can compel internet companies to give detailed information about the frequency of child exploitation on their platforms and about measures they take to stamp it out.

Companies that fail to cooperate face fines of up to A$700,000 ($478,000) per day.

Last year, the commissioner sent similar notices to Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Facebook owner Meta Platforms. After receiving their responses, the commissioner called their practices inadequate.

Inman Grant said a 2020 joint investigation with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection found widespread publicly-available abuse material on Twitter, which those authorities reported to Twitter's head of trust and safety.

"When you compound that with Elon Musk coming here, eviscerating the trust and safety team, but also cutting the local public policy externally-facing folks, and then allowing some of the worst of the worst actors back on, you're going to have a lot of bad actors, fewer guardrails," she said, commenting on the job cuts at Twitter.

Although Twitter had effectively closed its Australian unit, Inman Grant said her office had extra-territorial powers to fine companies abroad, but she hoped the public attention would prompt Twitter to cooperate.

($1 = 1.4637 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Covid Test Maker Lucira Goes Bankrupt as Demand for Kits Wanes



Amelia Pollard
Wed, February 22, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Lucira Health Inc., a publicly traded maker of at-home Covid-19 tests, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday.

California-based Lucira listed assets of about $146 million and liabilities of about $85 million in its bankruptcy petition. The company will keep operating during bankruptcy as it seeks to sell itself, according to a statement.

Lucira sells an at-home Covid test that provides “lab-quality results” in 30 minutes, according to its website. A single test is listed for $35 on the site.

Declining Covid-19 restrictions crimped demand for the tests, squeezing Lucira, Chief Executive Officer Erik Engelson said in the statement. Slower-than-expected regulatory approval for a flu test kit also hurt the company, he said.

Venture capital firm Eclipse Ventures holds about a 10% stake in Lucira, making it the company’s biggest shareholder, court papers show.

The case is Lucira Health, Inc., 23-10242, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Ancient bodies found in Mexico City show shared Catholic, pre-Hispanic graves






A view shows human remains discovered by archaeologists from INAH in Chapultepec park

Tue, February 21, 2023


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The remains of 28 human bodies buried at least four hundred years ago in Mexico indicate the comingling of pre-Hispanic and Catholic cultures that Spanish colonizers introduced, local researchers told Reuters.

The discovery took place during the construction of a scenic pavilion in Mexico City's Chapultepec park in February, when researchers stumbled across a cemetery from the early viceregal period of 1521 to 1620 AD.

Maria de Lourdes Lopez Camacho, the head of archeological salvage and National History Museum, said what is most striking is that, although the bodies originate from distinct populations, they were buried in the same period.

"Two burial systems are coexisting, the Christian burial and the burial in dorsal decubitus: the fetal position, on the side, with pre-Hispanic ceramic or obsidian, precisely from this Mexica or Tepaneca period," Lopez Camacho said, referring to the early viceregal period.

She added that it is possible the individuals had died from same cause.

"(The fact that) we have three levels of graves and there are a few centimeters that differentiate one level from another... tells us that there could have been one death or many deaths in a short period of time, which could tell us about an epidemic," she said.

The burials also suggest that a nearby pre-Hispanic population could have been used as a labor force for the nearby mills, the first industries the Spanish set up, the archeologist added.

Studies conducted by Mexico's Directorate of Archaeological Salvage (DSA) indicate the bodies belong to two different groups and that they had suffered from infections and diseases related to nutritional deficiency. More studies are scheduled.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) led the study.

(Reporting by Carlos Carillo; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Josie Kao)

WW3.0

Benjamin Netanyahu preparing for ‘attack on Iranian nuclear installations’  

ACT OF WAR
Campbell MacDiarmid
Wed, February 22, 2023

Benjamin Netanyahu - AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo

Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations in a series of secret high-level meetings with senior defence officials, according to a leaked report.

Mr Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has held five meetings with his defence chiefs, intelligence officials and the head of Mossad to discuss a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear programme, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday.

While Israel does not typically announce strikes in advance, it has consistently messaged its concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, suggesting the leak could be a deliberate signal from the Israeli government to compel Western allies to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Israel is believed to have carried out regular attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and staff, but never admits responsibility.

Israel has reportedly shared its secret plans with the United States and France, warning them it will act alone if the international community will not provide support.

Details of the meetings emerged a day after Mr Netanyahu said on Tuesday: “The only thing that has ever stopped rogue nations from developing nuclear weapons is a credible military threat or a credible military action.

“A necessary condition and often a sufficient condition is credible military action. The longer you wait, the harder that becomes. We’ve waited very long.”

Mr Netanyahu has long claimed that Iran’s nuclear programme poses an existential threat to Israel, although Tehran maintains that it does not seek atomic weapons and that its research is for peaceful purposes.

nuclear iran - Vahid Salemi/AP Photo

Israel opposes world powers renewing a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran from which former US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018.

Since then, Iran has steadily reduced its compliance with the agreement and talks have stalled over reviving the deal between Tehran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

While the Iran nuclear deal limited the purity to which Tehran could enrich uranium to 3.67 per cent, by April 2021 it was enriching to 60 per cent.

Last week, Bloomberg news reported that the UN nuclear watchdog had detected uranium enriched to 84 per cent purity at an Iranian nuclear facility – close to weapons grade.

On Monday, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation described the presence of any enriched material above 60 percent as “an anomaly”.

“So far, we have not made any attempt to enrich above 60 per cent,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi, in remarks published by state news agency IRNA. “The presence of particles above 60 per cent enrichment does not mean production with an enrichment above 60 per cent.”
‘Ambiguities’

On Wednesday, Mohammed Eslami, Iran’s nuclear chief, said inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog were in Tehran resolving any “ambiguities”.

“Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency are in Tehran and have been starting negotiations, visits and checks. Ambiguities created by an inspector are being resolved,” Mr Eslami said, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

However, these claims were contradicted by Hossein Amirabdollahian, the Iranian foreign minister, who said officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency would visit Tehran in the coming days.

“We hope that IAEA Director Grossi will reach an agreement with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation from a non-political and technical standpoint,” Mr Amirabdollahian said. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sought to acquire an atomic bomb.”

AMLO Asks Narco-Linked Official to Testify Against Ex-Presidents



Maya Averbuch
Wed, February 22, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s former security czar convicted this week of helping cartel members distribute illegal drugs to the US should testify against the leaders he served under, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

Genaro Garcia Luna, who on Tuesday was found guilty of conspiracy counts for distributing cocaine and engaging in a criminal enterprise by a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, could provide evidence against Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s presidents from 2000 to 2012, Lopez Obrador said.

“If he can give information that will help combat narco-trafficking and about the criminal association between authorities and criminals, that would be very good, regardless of whether they reduce his years in prison,” AMLO, as the president is known, told reporters during his morning press conference Wednesday.

Mexico’s president hailed the trial’s outcome as a step toward rooting out corruption in his country, while also saying he would not bring a criminal case against Fox and Calderon at the moment, or seek the extradition of Garcia Luna while his sentencing is pending.

The case has shaken Mexico’s political class as Garcia Luna, who led Calderon’s bloody war against the cartels earlier this century, is the highest ranking Mexican official to be convicted for narco association in the US. AMLO has regularly mentioned the trial at his daily conferences as an example of the corruption that flourished under previous governments.

Calderon said in a statement late Tuesday that the case is being used to attack him politically and defended his decision to fight criminal groups during his years as president.

“This resolution does not demean the courageous fight of thousands of police officers, soldiers, sailors, prosecutors, judges, and good public servants who defended Mexican families from crime,” wrote Calderon in the letter, denying having ever negotiated with criminals.

Fox, for his part, criticized AMLO on Twitter Wednesday for his own security strategy and the homicide rate during his years in government, saying that he was “embracing the criminals and abandoning the victims.”

The four-week trial included the testimony of former cartel members and cooperating witnesses who said that Garcia Luna placed Sinaloa Cartel operatives on Mexican police rolls and aided their drug shipments. One former Mexican federal police officer testified that Garcia Luna was paid as much as $1.5 million a month even before his promotion to security chief.

It also featured the testimony of Edgar Veytia, former Attorney General for Nayarit State, who was sentenced to a 20-year prison term after pleading guilty to participating in a heroin, cocaine and marijuana manufacturing and distribution scheme. He testified that he was given instructions by security officials “not to intervene” in fighting between Sinaloa cartel factions.

An earlier attempt by US authorities to hold to account former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos failed when he was arrested in the US in 2020 on charges of taking bribes to protect cartel members, then exonerated in Mexico after his extradition.

--With assistance from Patricia Hurtado.

Mexico passes electoral overhaul that critics warn weakens democracy


Mexico's senate discusses an initiative by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

Wed, February 22, 2023

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexican lawmakers on Wednesday approved a controversial overhaul of the body overseeing the country's elections, a move critics warn will weaken democracy ahead of a presidential vote next year.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador argues the reorganization will save $150 million a year and reduce the influence of economic interests in politics.

But opposition lawmakers and civil society groups have said they will challenge the changes at the Supreme Court, arguing they are unconstitutional. Protests are planned in multiple cities on Sunday.

The Senate approved the reform, which still needs to be signed into law by Lopez Obrador, 72 to 50.

The changes will cut the budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE), cull staff and close offices.

The INE has played an important role in the shift to multi-party democracy since Mexico left federal one-party rule in 2000. Critics fear some of that progress is being lost, in a pattern of eroding electoral confidence also seen in the United States and Brazil.

Lopez Obrador has repeatedly attacked the electoral agency, saying voter fraud robbed him of victory in the 2006 presidential election.

The head of the INE, Lorenzo Cordova, has called the changes a "democratic setback" that put at risk "certain, trustworthy and transparent" elections. Proposed "brutal cuts" in personnel would hinder the installation of polling stations and vote counting, Cordova said.

The changes, dubbed "Plan B," follow a more ambitious constitutional overhaul last year that fell short of the needed two-thirds majority. That bill had sought to convert the INE into a smaller body of elected officials.

Mexico will hold two state elections in June and general elections next year, including votes for president and elected officials in 30 states.

(Reporting by Adriana Barrera and Diego Ore; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Sandra Maler and William Mallard)

Mexico's Senate approves controversial electoral reform

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and wife Beatriz Gutierrez Muller wave during a state visit, at the National Palace in Mexico City, Jan. 11, 2023. Lopez Obrador said Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, that after his term ends in September 2024, he will totally withdraw from politics. 

(AP Photo/Fernando Llano, FILE)

Wed, February 22, 2023 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Senate on Wednesday approved a reform of the country’s electoral institute, a move that opponents say will undercut democracy but which the president contends will save money and reduce political privileges.

Lawmakers voted 72-50 in favor of the controversial overhaul of the body overseeing Mexico’s elections. Opponents immediately said they will challenge the changes in the supreme court. Protests are planned in multiple cities.

The reform still needs to be enacted by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but that is seen as a formality since he backs the initiative, which would reduce the size of the institute and limit its supervisory and sanctioning powers.

Some opposition lawmakers held up posters reading: “Morena wants to steal the elections,” referring to López Obrador’s ruling Morena party. Mexico has presidential elections scheduled for next year.

The legislative initiative, known as “Plan B”, was proposed by the president in December after he did not obtain enough votes in Congress for a constitutional reform that carried deeper electoral changes.

The president has repeatedly denied that the reform package could put the elections in Mexico at risk, saying the initiative seeks to cut the National Electoral Institute’s large budget and end its privileges.

López Obrador and his supporters have been critical of the electoral institute since 2006 when he came within 0.56% of the vote of winning the presidency and denounced his loss as fraudulent. He and his supporters launched a mass protest movement.

Despite the institute confirming his landslide victory in 2018, López Obrador has repeatedly complained of how costly it is to run elections in Mexico and sought to curtail the institute’s budget. He frequently says that the independent body is in the hands of the elite.

Some Mexicans see similarities to the rhetoric used by former U.S. President Donald Trump and ex-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of elections in those countries that aimed to erode confidence in the process.

Many in Mexico see the electoral institute as a key pillar of the country’s modern democracy. After 71 years of uninterrupted single-party rule, the opposition finally broke through in 2000.

López Obrador’s ruling Morena party is favored in next year's national elections and the opposition is in disarray, which would seem to give the president little incentive to attack the electoral institute. He remains highly popular in Mexico, but is not eligible for re-election.

Lorenzo Córdova, the institute’s leader, has aggressively defended it in public and framed the reforms as a threat to Mexico’s democracy. His outspokenness has made him a frequent target of López Obrador.

After Wednesday's vote, the institute said via Twitter that the reform “puts at risk the equity and transparency of the elections” by weakening the sanctions the institute can apply to candidates and parties that violate campaign finance rules.

Even before Wednesday night’s vote, the opposition had called a march in Mexico City Sunday in defense of the institute. The opposition held a similar march in November, which was ridiculed by López Obrador who led an even larger march days later.

The president had already worried some observers by frequently attacking Mexico's judiciary and concentrating enormous responsibility in the hands of the military, raising questions about his respect for the country's democratic institutions.