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Japan Accuses Ad Giant Dentsu of Rigging Bids for Tokyo Olympics

Prosecutors said the company and five others had conspired to evade the public bidding process for test events, part of a widening investigation into corruption surrounding the Games.

The National Stadium in Tokyo. Dentsu played a critical role in coordinating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, an event from which it stood to profit enormously.

Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

By Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno
Feb. 28, 2023

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu was one of the driving forces behind the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, helping bring in a record-shattering $3.6 billion in sponsorships and coordinating everything down to the smallest details.

On Tuesday, Japan’s prosecutors accused the company of breaking the law in the process, claiming it, and five others, conspired to evade the public bidding process leading up to the Games.

The accusations are part of a widening investigation into corruption surrounding the 2020 Olympics, which were delayed until 2021 because of the pandemic.

Japanese prosecutors have cast a wide net, charging executives from some of Japan’s top companies with bribery as they vied for high-profile sponsorship deals and sought contracts for, among other things, manufacturing Olympic uniforms and publishing printed materials for the Games.

The most recent charges relate to bid rigging, with prosecutors asserting that employees of Dentsu and other companies — including Japan’s second-largest advertising firm, Hakuhodo — violated the country’s antimonopoly law by circumventing the public bidding process for test events ahead of the Games. The events were essentially dress rehearsals designed to help organizers assess their readiness for hosting the main event.

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Rather than engage in open competition for contracts, the companies colluded to select a single firm to bid, the prosecutors said in a charging statement. In doing so, they “substantially limited competition,” prosecutors added.

Tokyo headquarters of Dentsu, which said it had established a committee to investigate the company’s conduct.

Credit...Kimimasa Mayama/EPA, via Shutterstock

Earlier on Tuesday, Japan’s Fair Trade Commission filed a complaint against the companies and seven individuals, including Yasuo Mori, a former executive on the Olympic organizing committee. Earlier this month, prosecutors arrested Mr. Mori and three of the people charged Tuesday.

Dentsu is widely considered one of Japan’s most influential firms, working closely with the country’s most powerful companies as well as its ruling political party. It is also a powerful figure in the world of international sports promotion, playing a critical role in putting together the Tokyo Olympic Games, an event from which it stood to profit enormously.

In a statement on its website Tuesday, Dentsu said that it “takes this situation seriously and offers its sincere apologies to its business partners, shareholders and all other relevant parties for any inconvenience or concern this may cause.” It said it had established a committee to investigate the company’s conduct and asked some senior executives to return part of their compensation.

Even before the Tokyo Olympics began, concerns about wrongdoing had surfaced. In 2016, French authorities said they had uncovered millions of dollars of payments made by Tokyo’s Olympic organizing committee to a Singaporean firm in an effort to secure the winning bid to host the Games. The scandal led the head of the national Olympic committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, to resign. Mr. Takeda has denied any wrongdoing.

In the years since, additional corruption allegations have tainted the reputations of some of Japan’s most prominent companies.

In August, prosecutors arrested top executives from the publishing giant Kadokawa and the business clothing retailer Aoki Holdings on bribery charges. A former Dentsu executive, Haruyuki Takahashi, who served on the executive board of the committee charged with organizing the Tokyo Games, was also arrested. He has denied the charges against him.

In December, Aoki Holdings’ founder, Hironori Aoki, pleaded guilty to giving around $205,000 to Mr. Takahashi. In a court appearance this month, the ex-president of the Japanese marketing company ADK admitted to paying Mr. Takahashi over $100,000 as his company sought marketing opportunities linked to the Games.

In response to reporters’ questions about Tuesday’s charges, Japan’s top government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, said they showed “contempt for the value of sports.”

  -   -  -

Ben Dooley reports on Japan’s business and economy, with a special interest in social issues and the intersections between business and politics. @benjamindooley

Hisako Ueno has been reporting on Japanese politics, business, gender, labor and culture for The Times since 2012. She previously worked for the Tokyo bureau of The Los Angeles Times from 1999 to 2009. @hudidi1

A version of this article appears in print on March 1, 2023, Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Japan Says 6 Companies Rigged Bids For Olympics. 

Estonia's academic unions call for prompt increase in education funding 

2023-02-28
BNS/TBT Staff


TALLINN - Unions representing more than 3,000 researchers at Estonia's largest universities have issued a public appeal during the run-up to the March 5 general election, arguing that previous governments have ignored the fact that Estonia's deepening education crisis is threatening the survival of the country's democracy, economy, and Estonian as a language of culture and science, unless investment in education is increased significantly.

In their joint appeal, the unions of researchers and other staff of the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University and the Estonian University of Life Sciences say that Estonia's deepening education crisis has not received nearly enough attention in the election campaigns, even though it threatens the future of all areas of life.

"All voters should demand that politicians solve the education crisis," said University of Tartu professor Irja Lutsar.

Tallinn University associate professor Birgit Poopuu described it as a serious problem that the Estonian education system is essentially not managed as a whole, which is why there is a crisis at all levels.

"There is a catastrophic shortage of qualified teachers and lecturers from kindergarten and basic school to doctoral level. Working conditions and pay levels are not attracting nearly enough young people into education. In higher education, this means not enough lecturers and not enough young researchers," Poopuu said.

Ants Koel, senior researcher at Tallinn University of Technology, noted that experts in the field of education have actually developed necessary solutions and various parties have also agreed among themselves on how the crisis could be resolved.

"One and a half years ago, a broad-based education agreement was concluded, with which both general and higher education representative bodies stated that a sustainable solution is to invest 1.5 percent of GDP annually in both teachers' salaries and higher education," Koel said.

According to Tallinn University professor Daniele Monticelli, courage is needed to take difficult decisions in order to find money to invest in education, which would be an indicator of statesmanship in the current situation.

"Really important decisions are rarely popular. Research confirms that investing in education is an investment that pays back economically, socially and culturally," he said.

Heiki Lill, lecturer at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and the head of the university's trade union, drew a parallel between the situation in education and national defense.

"We remember how, after joining NATO, some political forces tried to explain that there was no need to invest in Estonia's own national defense and that conscript service could be abolished. Today, we can sigh with relief that this was not done. Now that the war in Ukraine has put this understanding in place, our country has begun to make up for the backlog and urgently increase investment. The situation in education is somewhat similar to that in national defense some time ago: there's money only for most pressing needs and professionals are in the mood of leaving their jobs," Lill said.

It is not wise to wait for a similar shock, where schools are empty of teachers and lecturers and the level of education has gone down. Instead, investments in the key area of Estonia's sustainability must be made immediately by differentiating teachers' salaries, introducing proper basic salaries for lecturers, and other well thought out measures, Kadri Leetmaa, associate professor at the University of Tartu, added.

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is


First image captured of a black hole, revealed in 2019.

You’ll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one

February 24, 2023

Wondering is a series of random questions answered by experts. For this entry, we asked the astrophysicist Avi Loeb, founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, to help us picture the scariest void in the universe.

A black hole is a region in space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. It is an extreme structure of space and time. One way black holes are formed is when a star consumes its nuclear fuel and collapses because there is no energy supply to support it against gravity. When that happens, once the matter crosses the horizon of the black hole, it cannot emit any light. In the only two images captured of a black hole, there is a ring of light around the black hole because when it is being formed, the matter is moving extremely fast, close to the speed of light, and there is a huge release of energy and radiation. We call them black holes because once the matter falls into a black hole and there is no more radiation, it becomes completely dark and invisible to us.


"I once gave a presentation about black holes to fourth-graders at my daughter’s school. A boy asked me what would happen to his body if he got inside a black hole. As I started to explain, the teacher stopped me, saying that the kids would have nightmares."
Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Is a black hole really a hole? We don’t know the answer. What we know is that near the center of the black hole there is a point called singularity, where the density of the matter becomes infinite, and gravity is very strong. Einstein’s theory of general relativity is unable to predict what happens there. In principle, you can imagine an astronaut going into a black hole. As he moved closer to the singularity, his body would be ripped apart by gravity. I once gave a presentation about black holes to fourth-graders at my daughter’s school. A boy asked me what would happen to his body if he got inside a black hole. As I started to explain, the teacher stopped me, saying that the kids would have nightmares.

One of the most common misconceptions about black holes is that they are a portal to some other universe. We don’t know whether there is another universe. We don’t have any evidence for that. All we see is our own universe, and although we know the universe is expanding, we don’t know if there is another place that we can go to. If I had to guess, I would say that if you fall into a black hole, you end up inside a black hole. Since we don’t have a quantum theory of gravity, we can’t really calculate what exactly happens there.

The study of black holes is important for two reasons. One is environmental, which is what an astrophysicist cares about: Black holes have a huge impact on their environment because they’re very efficient at making energy out of matter, and the energy they release can affect the evolution of galaxies significantly. The second aspect is more fundamental. We don’t know what happens at the center of a black hole because Einstein’s theory is incomplete. Any theory that we develop to unify quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of matter on a small scale, and gravity will unveil the secrets of the universe. If we understand what happens near the center of a black hole, we will also be able to figure out what happened before the Big Bang.


— As told to Liz Mineo, Harvard Staff Writer

East Palestine crash highlights dangers of toxic chemicals transported by rail

Ten years ago, a train loaded with crude oil derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing dozens

The aftermath of the derailment of a train carrying hazardous waste in East Palestine, Ohio. Reuters

Willy Lowry
Washington
Feb 28, 2023

When I first saw the images of overturned train cars, fire and black smoke billowing up into the sky above East Palestine, Ohio, I was immediately transported back to the nightmare scene of a wet July morning nearly 10 years ago, when a train carrying crude oil derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

In the early hours of July 6, 2013, 73 train carriages parked for the night on the outskirts of town broke free from their moorings and began barrelling downhill, picking up speed on the way.

After hitting a bend in the track as they entered the centre of town, the cars — loaded with the highly flammable and toxic fuel — slammed into the ground and buildings, killing nearly 50 people, some as they slept, others as they danced the night away at a popular bar.

As a cub reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I was there, witnessing the shocking aftermath.

I’ll never forget the thick, black smoke that hovered over the once picturesque village of 6,000 people.

In those early hours, it was not yet apparent that this would be one of the worst disasters in Canadian history, nor that it would reverberate across the country for years to come, as questions of rail safety still linger.

As I pulled my car to a stop next to a ribbon of red caution tape signifying that this was as close to the burning village that I would be able to get, the severity of the situation quickly became apparent.









Firefighters douse a blaze after a train loaded with oil derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, on June 6, 2013. AFP


Helicopters circled above as throngs of firefighters ran helplessly towards the blaze, which by that point had already been burning for more than six hours.

Acrid smoke hung in the thick summer air, enveloping building after building and masking the pristine lake that gives the town its name.

I started to talk to the handful of residents who were lingering by the cordon trying to see what remained of their town.

Everyone I spoke to that morning knew someone yet to be accounted for.

For more than a century, the railway ran through the heart of downtown Lac-Megantic, connecting Montreal to eastern Canada. In the late 19th century when the railway was built, it was an economic lifeline that allowed the village to grow and prosper into a thriving tourist town.

It was a huge victory for burgeoning communities across Canada to get a rail line. It would often mean the difference between withering up or blossoming into a real destination.

But that lifeline turned into a fiery inferno that changed Lac-Megantic and the country forever.

In the aftermath of the explosion, the town’s then-mayor Colette Roy-LaRoche and other officials called for tighter regulations on rail safety across North America.

Ms Roy-LaRoche even travelled to Washington in 2014 to ask the US Congress to act.

She attended an event at the Capitol with other North American mayors and, according to Canadian media at the time, no members of Congress bothered to show up, choosing instead to send staffers.

In 2015, the US Department of Transportation and Transport Canada agreed to phase out the DOT-111 tankers that were involved in the Lac-Megantic tragedy and widely used to carry fuel and other flammable substances across North America.

But now, nearly 10 years later, another tragedy has unfolded on the continent's criss-crossing tracks, once again raising questions about rail safety.

Roughly 25 million Americans live near rail tracks where crude oil and other chemicals are transported.

Why are trains carrying toxic chemicals allowed to travel along tracks that go through town after town after town, exposing these populations to potential danger?

Derailments are more common than one might think, with 1,093 occurring in the US last year.







Portions of a Norfolk and Southern freight train on fire after it derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. AP

While the vast majority of derailments are simply minor nuisances for the rail companies, some have the potential to cause great harm.

In the case of East Palestine, fortunately no one was killed but the environmental and health implications are extremely troubling.

Federal and state officials have said it is safe for residents to return to their homes, but locals appear distrustful of that assessment with some complaining of “mystery illnesses” — about 45,000 animals have died in the area.

Some residents are reportedly suffering from nausea, headaches, rashes and other symptoms believed to linked to the incident. Others say their house pets are sick or have died.

“I think this should be a wake-up call for the value of investing in prevention in terms of people's lives and economic costs,” said Mathy Stanislaus, executive director of the Environmental Collaboratory at Drexel University and a former assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama.

The rail industry may not have adequately heeded the wake-up call from Lac-Megantic, but it gets another chance to from East Palestine. Until it does, how many more will needlessly suffer?

Updated: February 28, 2023,

Lilly to cut some list prices by 70% and offer $25 insulin

An Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical manufacturing plant is pictured at 50 ImClone Drive in Branchburg, New Jersey

March 1 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.N) on Wednesday said it will cut list prices by 70% for its most commonly prescribed insulin products, Humalog and Humulin, beginning from the fourth quarter of this year.

The Indianapolis-based drugmaker also will lower the price of its Lispro insulin injection to $25 a vial and expand its insulin value program so that an existing $35 cap on some insulins will now apply in about 85% of U.S. pharmacies.

The move comes as U.S. President Joe Biden has pushed to extend to most Americans the $35 cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs available to recipients of the government's Medicare health program, a move some lawmakers have also said they would support with legislation.

"While we could wait for Congress to act or the healthcare system in general to apply that standard, we're just applying it ourselves," Chief Executive Dave Ricks told CNN in an interview.

Eli Lilly, along with Sanofi (SASY.PA) and Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) make up 90% of the U.S. market for insulin. Lilly shares were up 1.6% at $316.14.

Biden, a Democrat, on Tuesday called on Congress and other manufacturers to lower the price of insulin as Lilly had done. Sanofi and Novo were not immediately available for comment.

Ricks said in a media call that he had not spoken to the Biden administration about the change before it was announced, but that he had previously talked to lawmakers trying to cap insulin costs, including Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins.

The list price for Lispro, a cheaper version of its Humalog insulin, is currently $82.41 for 100 units/mL vials. A Humalog U-100 10 mL vial is $274.70, which will drop to $66.40, and a Humulin U-100 10 mL vial is $148.70. That will become $44.61.

Lilly last year said it would lower Lispro's price by 40% for some consumers.

List prices for drugs often differ from what patients actually pay, including after insurance and other assistance programs.

While the $35 price is only available in pharmacies participating in the company's insulin value program, Ricks said patients using other pharmacies can receive a rebate through the drugmaker's website.

These price cuts "should be the new standard in America," the CEO said, and he called on other companies and stakeholders "to meet us at this point."

"Insulin has become such a pivotal issue because of affordability," Ricks said.

Around 8.4 million of the 37 million people in the United States with diabetes use insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Ricks said the company's insulin price cuts had been planned for some time and were accounted for in Eli Lilly's December financial forecast, which projected 2023 revenue of at least $30.3 billion.

WAR IS ECOCIDE
Soils of war: The toxic legacy for Ukraine's breadbasket
By Rod Nickel

 Debris lies on a sack of grain at the farm of Andrii Povod, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bilozerka, Kherson region, Ukraine, February 20, 2023. 

BILOZERKA, Ukraine, March 1 (Reuters) - When Ukraine recaptured Kherson in November, Andrii Povod returned to find his grain farm in ruins. Two tractors were missing, most of the wheat was gone and all 11 buildings used to store crops and machinery had been bombed and burned.

The farm bears the scars of Russian shelling and unexploded ordnance riddles the fields but it's the less visible damage to Ukraine's famously fertile soil after a year of war that could be the hardest to repair.

Scientists looking at soil samples taken from the recaptured Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine found that high concentrations of toxins such as mercury and arsenic from munitions and fuel are polluting the ground.

Using the samples and satellite imagery, scientists at Ukraine's Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research estimated that the war has degraded at least 10.5 million hectares of agricultural land across Ukraine so far, according to the research shared with Reuters.

That's a quarter of the agricultural land, including territory still occupied by Russian forces, in a country described as the breadbasket of Europe.

"For our region, it's a very big problem. This good soil, we cannot reproduce it," said Povod, 27, walking around his farm near Bilozerka in southeast Ukraine, about 10 km (6 miles) from the Dnipro River that is one of the war's front lines.

Two dozen experts who spoke with Reuters, including soil scientists, farmers, grain companies and analysts, said it would take decades to fix the damage to Europe's breadbasket - including contamination, mines and destroyed infrastructure - and that global food supplies could suffer for years to come.

Shelling has also upset the delicate ecosystems of microorganisms that turn soil materials into crop nutrients such as nitrogen while tanks have compressed the earth, making it harder for roots to flourish, the scientists say.

Some areas are so mined and physically transformed by craters and trenches that, like some World War One battlefields, they may never return to farm production, some experts say.

A view of the depression from shelling in field of grain farmer Andrii Povod that has been damaged by shelling and trenches, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bilozerka, Kherson region, Ukraine, February 20, 2023. 

LOSS OF FERTILITY

Before the war, Ukraine was the world's fourth-largest corn exporter and fifth-biggest wheat seller, and a key supplier to poor countries in Africa and the Middle East that depend on grain imports.

After Russia's invasion a year ago, global grain prices climbed as the Black Sea ports that usually ship Ukraine's harvest closed, exacerbating inflation rates around the world.

The war damage could cut Ukraine's potential grain harvest by 10 to 20 million tonnes a year, or up to a third based on its pre-war output of 60 to 89 million tonnes, the Soil Institute's director, Sviatoslav Baliuk told Reuters.

Other factors are also important for production levels, such as the area of land farmers plant, climate change, the use of fertilisers and adoption of new farming technology.

Ukraine's agriculture ministry declined to comment about soil contamination and long-term harm to the industry.

Besides the damage to the soil, Ukrainian farmers are struggling with unexploded shells in many fields, as well as the destruction of irrigation canals, crop silos and port terminals.

Andriy Vadaturskyi, chief executive of Nibulon, one of Ukraine's biggest grain producers, expects demining alone to take 30 years and said urgent financial help was needed to keep Ukrainian farmers in business.

"Today, there is a problem of high prices but the food is available," Vadaturskyi said in an interview. "But tomorrow, in one year's time, it could be the situation if there is no solution, that it will be a shortage of food."

Ukraine's most fertile soil - called chernozem - has suffered the most, the institute found. Chernozem is richer than other soils in nutrients such as humus, phosphorus and nitrogen and extends deep into the ground, as much as 1.5 metres.

The institute's Baliuk said the war damage could lead to an alarming loss of fertility.

Increased toxicity and reduced diversity of microorganisms, for example, have already reduced the energy corn seeds can generate to sprout by an estimated 26%, resulting in lower yields, he said, citing the Institute's research.

Grain farmer Andrii Povod stands beside his field that has been damaged by shelling and trenches, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bilozerka, Kherson region, Ukraine, February 20, 2023.

ECHOES OF WORLD WAR ONE

A working group of soil scientists created by the Ukrainian government estimates it would cost $15 billion to remove all mines and restore Ukraine's soil to its former health.

That restoration can take as little as three years, or more than 200, depending on the type of degradation, Baliuk said.

If studies of damage to land during World War One are anything to go by, some areas will never recover.

U.S. academics Joseph Hupy and Randall Schaetzl, coined the term "bombturbation" in 2006 to describe war's impact on soil. Among the unseen damage, bomb breaches in bedrock or soil layers can change the water table's depth, depriving vegetation of a shallow water source, they wrote.

At a former World War One battlefield near Verdun, France, some pre-war grain fields and pastures have gone unfarmed for more than a century due to craters and unexploded shells, a 2008 paper by Remi de Matos-Machado and Hupy said.

Hupy told Reuters that some arable land in Ukraine, too, may never return to crop production due to its contamination and topographic alteration. Many other fields will require significant earth-moving to relevel the ground, along with demining on a massive scale, Hupy said.

Naomi Rintoul-Hynes, senior lecturer in soil science and environmental management at Canterbury Christ Church University, studied soil contamination from World War One and fears the conflict in Ukraine is doing similar, irreversible damage.

"It is of utmost importance that we understand how bad the situation is as it stands," she said.

Lead, for example, has a half-life of 700 years or more, meaning it may take that long for its concentration in the soil to decrease by half. Such toxins can accumulate so much in plants growing there that human health may become affected, Rintoul-Hynes said.

To be sure, World War One lasted four years, and the war in Ukraine only one year so far, but lead remains a key component of many modern munitions, Rintoul-Hynes said.

 A trench is seen near a field of grain farmer Andrii Povod, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bilozerka, Kherson region, Ukraine, February 20, 2023

DEMINING CHALLENGE

Removing mines and other unexploded ordnance, which cover 26% of Ukraine's land according to the government, will likely take decades, said Michael Tirre, Europe program manager for the U.S. State Department's Office of Weapons Removal.

Andrii Pastushenko's dairy farm in southeastern Ukraine, where he grows cattle feed and sunflowers, is pockmarked with craters and former Russian bunkers.

Though Ukraine recaptured the area in November, Russian forces shell his farm regularly from across the Dnipro River, blowing new holes in his fields and scattering unexploded ordnance, he said.

"We need many months to clear everything and continue to work, maybe years," said Pastushenko, 39. "There is no help because we are on the first line of fire. No one will help while this is a war zone."

There is currently no work underway on demining farms in the Kherson region because of a limited number of specialists, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, a spokesperson for the Kherson Regional Military Administration.

With so little help available, grain company Nibulon has created a small division dedicated to demining its land in southern Ukraine, a process expected to last decades, Mykhailo Rizak, Nibulon's deputy director told Reuters.

"This is a very serious problem for Nibulon," Rizak said.

A general view of the destroyed barn of grain farmer Andrii Povod, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bilozerka, Kherson region, Ukraine, February 20, 2023. 

There's another long-term problem for Ukraine's agricultural sector, which accounted for 10% of its gross domestic product before the war. That's the damage to roads, railways and other infrastructure estimated at $35.3 billion and counting, the Kyiv School of Economics said in October.

"People think as soon as peace is achieved, the food crisis will be solved," said Caitlin Welsh, director of global food security at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. "With Ukraine, just repairing the infrastructure is going to take a really long time."

Farmers' finances are also in a desperate state, said Dmitry Skornyakov, chief executive of HarvEast, a major Ukrainian farming company.

Many farmers can survive this year, living off the income of a bumper year just before the war, said Skornyakov, but he predicts up to half will have severe financial problems if the conflict drags into 2024.

"The future is from grey to dark at the moment."

Reporting by Rod Nickel in Bilozerka; Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Editing by David Clarke

PHOTOS REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Britain's M&S lifts store worker pay by 7% citing rising living costs


Shoppers walk past a branch of Marks and Spencer in Altrincham, Britain 


LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - British retailer Marks & Spencer will raise hourly pay for over 40,000 store workers by 7% from April a third rise in just over two years that may catch the attention of the Bank of England, which is worried about inflationary pressure in the economy.

M&S (MKS.L), said on Tuesday its customer assistants will receive 10.90 pounds ($13.19) an hour, up from 10.20 pounds currently.

The BoE is watching pay settlements closely as it mulls further rises in interest rates.

BoE Governor Andrew Bailey earlier this month expressed concerns about wage-setting, despite signs that the surge in inflation - which hit 11.1% in October before falling to 10.1% in January - was abating.

M&S, which previously raised hourly pay in September, said the latest rise reflects the accelerating cost of living its workers are facing and means that pay has risen by over 20% since the start of 2021.

But it also likely reflects Britain's still tight labour market. Data this month showed that despite being on the brink of recession, the country's jobless rate held close to five-decade lows and employment grew.

Supermarket groups Tesco (TSCO.L) and Asda have both recently announced staff pay rises.

The government-mandated National Living Wage will rise to 10.42 pounds an hour from April, an increase of 9.7%.

M&S said workers in London will get 12.05 pounds an hour, up from 11.25 pounds, while all workers will continue to receive benefits including a staff discount, pension contribution and participation in share schemes.

The investment will cost the retailer 60 million pounds.

GHANA
‘A bunch of pirates who are here to loot’: New claims against Chinese miner

By Edward Adeti and Eryk Bagshaw
March 1, 2023 — 

The Chinese miner at the centre of a $395 million lawsuit by an Australian company has been accused in court of trespassing on another miner’s land, intimidating workers and colluding with local officials to threaten villagers with military action.

Ghana’s High Court has ordered an interlocutory injunction blocking the Chinese-state-linked miner Earl International, formerly known as Shaanxi, from mining a 10-hectare area in eastern Ghana until the case is resolved after claims it had “blatantly disregarded” the local mining concession run by Nanlaamtaaba Enterprises.

Aerial view of the Earl Mining facility in the Gban community. CREDIT:FRANCIS KOKOROKO

In a separate claim, Australian miner Cassius alleges that Earl dug tunnels hundreds of metres underground into its concession and plundered tens of millions of dollars in gold from its veins. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s revealed last year that the Chinese miner had also been accused of causing dozens of deaths in the Gban area through poisonous gasses. Earl has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

The cases have put the spotlight on the alleged human rights abuses of Chinese-state-linked operations as Beijing pushes for greater investment worldwide.

In an interlocutory injunction by the High Court in Bolgatanga on Thursday, Judge Alexander Graham said he had ordered Earl to “stop interfering with [Nanlaamtaaba Enterprises’s] mining concession”.


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Nanlaamtaaba Enterprises claimed in its motion that Earl’s alleged acts of trespass have caused the company grave economic loss. The local miner alleged that Earl had given grants to the regional minister to pay local miners between $5000 and $17,000 for their concessions but no “such agreement was entered into between myself and the [Earl] in this regard”.

“The [district chief executive] called me to threaten me with military action against me if I took any step to restrain [Earl] in its unlawful acts of trespass on my concession,” said Nanlaamtaaba Enterprises owner Zongdan Kolog in his motion filed with the High Court.

Cassius formally commenced proceedings in the London Court of International Arbitration for $395 million in losses from its Gban project on February 7. It has engaged global firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to act on its behalf. The company is suing the Ghanaian government over claims it failed to prevent Earl from trespassing on its land. Cassius is also pursuing Earl in local courts in Ghana, but the case has been bogged down for years amid claims of corruption.

“I look forward to the hearing of the arbitration against the government of Ghana,” said Cassius chairman James Arkoudis. “After the extensive preparations that we have made, together with our legal team, we are confident of a successful resolution in the company’s favour.”

Samuel Ablakawa, an opposition MP and member of Ghana’s foreign affairs committee, said the mining industry had become the “most sordid, the most corrupt, the most despicable sector in our country”.

James Arkoudis with local leaders in Ghana.

Ablakawa said the government had allowed companies like Earl, which had “absolutely no regard for human life,” to flourish.

“They are just a bunch of crooks who are just here to exploit and take advantage of the mineral resources that we have,” he said. ″⁣They don’t believe in fair trade. They don’t believe in ethical businesses. They are just a bunch of pirates who are here to loot.

“Entities like that, who are just engaged in naked exploitation must not be allowed to continue with what they do. They are committing mass murders. They are subjecting Ghanaians to dehumanising working conditions. I can’t understand why they still have a licence.”

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Samuel Jinapor, Ghana’s minister for lands and natural resources was contacted for comment. In September, Jinapor said the Ghanaian Minerals Commission would investigate the alleged theft of millions worth of gold and the deaths of dozens of miners.

Earl has denied the allegations and maintained that it is “a proper licensed mining company, mining according to the rules and laws of the mining industry in Ghana”.

Australia’s Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Tim Watts, who travelled to Ghana in December to meet with representatives from the industry, declined to comment.

“A number of Australian mining companies are successfully operating in Ghana and are making vital contributions to the economies and livelihoods of local communities,” a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

“As the dispute between Australian company Cassius Mining Ltd and Chinese company Shaanxi is the subject of legal action, it would not be appropriate to comment on this, including during the assistant minister’s visit to Ghana.”

Germany’s top diplomat wants to give foreign office a feminist revamp

Annalena Baerbock will unveil plan, including to create a new ‘ambassador for feminist foreign policy.’

The concept of feminist foreign policy has been practiced by other countries for years, with Sweden becoming the first to commit to such principles in 2014 | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

BY GABRIEL RINALDI
FEBRUARY 28, 2023 

BERLIN — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is set to debut a feminist overhaul of the country’s diplomatic tactics on Wednesday, including creating a new role for an “ambassador for feminist foreign policy.”

The 80-page report on new guidelines — titled “Shaping Feminist Foreign Policy” and seen in advance by POLITICO — is a cornerstone of Baerbock’s agenda and was included in the coalition agreement to form a government between her Green party, the business-friendly Free Democrats, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.

The report outlines 10 overarching guidelines, first reported by ThePioneer, including offering gender-sensitive humanitarian aid abroad; ensuring women and marginalized groups are involved in economic processes; and considering gender issues in climate and energy foreign policy.

“We are pursuing a feminist foreign policy because it is bitterly necessary. Because men and women are still not equal worldwide,” Baerbock wrote in the report.

The concept of feminist foreign policy has been practiced by other countries for years, with Sweden becoming the first to commit to such principles in 2014. Countries like Canada, Mexico, and Spain followed, but the new Swedish government under center-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has announced its intention to overturn the concept.

Baerbock’s report says the principles will guide national foreign policy including at the European Union, as well as “shape our inner workings and help us to form a ‘feminist reflex.’” The ministry wants to “measurably advance gender equality worldwide” so that “all people are equally represented in all areas of life … [and] all have equal access to resources,” Baerbock wrote in the preface.

She added that feminist foreign policy “is not foreign policy for women, but for all members of a society,” including those “marginalized by society on the basis of gender identity, origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation or other reasons.”

The guidelines espouse the importance of concepts such as gender “mainstreaming” — thus considering different effects of decisions on different genders and groups.

It says the ministry aims to introduce gender-specific budgeting with the goal of spending 85 percent of project funds in a “gender-sensitive” manner and 8 percent in a “gender-transformative” way that actively challenges gender norms, by the end of the legislative period.

The new ambassador role will further develop the guidelines and ensure their implementation. She will also be assigned her own unit in the ministry, which has already been set up.

Members of Germany’s main opposition group, the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, are skeptical.

Markus Söder, the regional premier of Bavaria and head of the CSU, called Baerbock’s plan “incomprehensible,” telling Mediengruppe Bayern that “traveling the world and telling everyone else what they should and should not do is doomed to failure.”

CDU lawmaker Katja Leikert told POLITICO that “as a matter of principle, it’s always laudable to try to give a bigger voice to women and minority groups in foreign policy,” but added: “I am skeptical, however, when it comes to the implementation. Over the past few months, the government has given grand speeches on the merits of female foreign policy without really substantiating it.”

German FM Shows Solidarity with Victims of Settler Attack in Huwara

M.Y | DOP - 28 February, 2023

German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock expressed on Tuesday her condolences for the Palestinians who were victims of the violent attack by Israeli settlers in the town of Huwara, located in the occupied West Bank.

Baerbock expressed her sympathy for the people affected by the violence in Huwara, noting that many homes and cars had been set on fire, leaving innocent families in a state of shock and fear.

At a press conference in Berlin alongside Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen, she voiced her opinions.

On Sunday night, a large number of settlers assaulted Palestinian towns and cities in the northern West Bank, with Huwwara as the focus of their fury after two settler brothers were killed in the city, which was set aflame by the angry mob.

At least one Palestinian was killed and nearly 400 were injured in a long–term bout of violence in Huwwara, as well as other locations in the West Bank. It was reported that a minimum of 35 homes were totally engulfed by fire, with an additional 40 homes partially damaged. Furthermore, numerous houses were burned down while their inhabitants were still inside. Finally, over 100 vehicles were either burned or ruined.

Baerbock showed her worry about the proposal by the Israeli occupation government to enforce capital punishment for Palestinians accused of deadly assaults.

She characterized the move as “a huge mistake” and highlighted that her nation is firmly against capital punishment everywhere, contending that it has been demonstrated to be ineffectual as a preventive measure.

She stated that, regardless of whether in the United States, Japan, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, Germany is committed to expressing their opposition to the death penalty out of their deeply held convictions.