Italian coastguards bring 1,300 migrants ashore in three separate rescue missions

The number is one of the highest in one day, putting more pressure on the government which has vowed to reduce the flow of asylum seekers

By Our Foreign Staff

11 March 2023 • 

Migrants come ashore in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy after being rescued from the Mediterranean 

CREDIT: MARCO COSTANTINO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

More than 1,300 migrants were brought ashore in Italy on Saturday after three separate rescue operations in the Mediterranean, two weeks after at least 74 people died when their boat hit rocks near the coast.

The figure is one of the highest in a day. More than 17,000 people have reached Italy so far this year, including around 4,000 this week, compared to 6,000 in the same period in 2022. Hundreds have also died trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe.

Growing numbers of migrant arrivals have piled pressure on Italy’s conservative government, which took office last October promising to reduce the flow only to see a sharp increase in such landings this year from both North Africa and Turkey.

The coastguard said one of its vessels had taken 500 migrants off one boat more than 100 miles (160 km) out to sea, and subsequently took them to the city of Reggio Calabria.

A further 379 migrants were removed from a separate vessel in the same vicinity and will be brought to land shortly.

“The rescues (were) complex due to the boats being overloaded with migrants and the unfavourable sea conditions,” the coastguard said in a statement.

Another packed fishing boat carrying 487 migrants was escorted into the Calabrian port of Crotone, lashed to a tug to help give it stability.

People march in solidarity with the families of the victims of a deadly shipwreck that killed at least 74 migrants  NOTE THE ANTIFASCIST FLAG IN FRONT

CREDIT: AP Photo/Valeria Ferraro

Local officials said a further 200 people had been picked up off the coast of Sicily and would be ferried to Catania later in the day, while the airforce was flying migrants out of a packed reception centre on the island of Lampedusa.

The body of a young girl was recovered on Saturday close to where a migrant boat broke apart on Feb 26, bringing the death toll from that one disaster to 74. Seventy-nine people survived the shipwreck, but around 30 are still missing, presumed dead.

In all, the United Nations estimates 300 migrants have died in the central Mediterranean so far this year.

Prosecutors are investigating whether Italian authorities should have done more to prevent the disaster. Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, has rejected the suggestion and looked to pin the blame entirely on human traffickers.

Her cabinet on Thursday introduced tougher jail terms for people smugglers and promised to open up more channels for legal migration. Late last year, it cracked down on charity rescue boats, accusing them of acting as a taxi service for migrants.

The charities denied this was the case. The measure has led to a sharp reduction in the number of rescue ships patrolling the Mediterranean, without apparently dissuading migrants from putting to sea.

Protestors take to the street to demand strict Swiss neutrality
 

Many protestors, accompanied by a group in white shirts and with cow bells, waved Swiss flags. © Keystone / Anthony Anex

An estimated 3,000 demonstrators in the Swiss capital, Bern, have come out against the exports of Swiss war materiel and economic sanctions in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This content was published on March 11, 2023March 11, 20231minutes
Keystone-SDA/SWI
Other language: 1 (EN original)

The protest outside the parliament building was called by an alliance of right-wing critics, including groups opposed to the government's policy during the Covid pandemic.

Members of the right-wing Swiss People's Party and conservative civil society groups as well as from the far-right addressed the demonstrators according the Keystone-SDA news agency.

They demanded a policy of strict Swiss neutrality.

A week ago, a rally planned by a cross-party committee, trade unions and civil society groups from the opposite political spectrum was attended by more then 2,000 people in Bern. They called for more support for the people of Ukraine, effective implementation of sanctions and an active peace policy by Switzerland.

Zurich demo

In a separate demonstration on Saturday, an estimated 2,000 people took part in a street protest, organised by far-left groups in the city of Zurich to mark International Women's Day on March 8.

The participants called for an end of the "patriarchal system and capitalism".

The unauthorised demonstration passed off mainly peacefully amid increased police presence.

A previous, illegal demonstration in Zurich three weeks ago had ended in clashes between security forces and protesters.

 

Lula promises public works in Brazil to create jobs, boost economy

 11 March 2023 21:54 (UTC+04:00)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva guaranteed Friday that his government will promote public works throughout the country to create jobs and boost economic growth.

"I want to travel around Brazil to inaugurate houses, schools, kindergartens, roads, universities and technical schools. We have to put this country to work," Lula said during a meeting in Brasilia to discuss infrastructure projects with some of his ministers.

According to Lula, the country's large public banks should play a leading role in the public works to boost the economy, granting credit to small and medium-sized enterprises, cooperatives, large businesses, and state and municipal governments so that they will be able to borrow.

He detailed that when he took office on Jan. 1, his government found 14,000 paralyzed projects throughout the country, many of them on the verge of completion.

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Chile’s Boric vows to keep pushing defeated tax plan

By AFP
PublishedMarch 11, 2023


Supporters of Chile's President Gabriel Boric celebrate his first year in office, outside the presidential palace in Santiago, on March 11, 2023

- Copyright AFP/File ALEXIS HUGUET

Chile’s leftist president Gabriel Boric marked his first year in office on Saturday and insisted he will continue pushing tax reforms seen as central to his ambitious social program.

Boric began the day meeting with his cabinet before greeting hundreds of people gathered in front of the presidential palace in Santiago.

Boric spent nearly an hour shaking hands, posing for pictures and receiving gifts and messages, while a smaller group of far-right demonstrators nearby staged an anti-Boric protest.

In the cabinet meeting, Boric said he would not give up on the reform program that was narrowly rejected Wednesday by the lower house.

“We are going to insist on the tax reform,” he said, without explaining how he hoped to do so.

The defeated plan would have imposed new taxes on the wealthiest Chileans and on the mining industry in order to finance greater spending on health and education, as well as a 25 percent increase in the universal basic pension.

“The year 2022 was not easy,” Boric conceded, before adding that “we have all the conditions to move forward and lay the foundations of a welfare state and guarantee social rights.”

Boric, a former student leader, became the youngest president in Chilean history when he took office a year ago.

While some Russian exiles join Georgia protests, others keep away

By AFP
Published March 11, 2023

Rights groups have also criticised Georgia's authorities for barring several Kremlin critics from entering the country - Copyright AFP/File ALEXIS HUGUET

Maxime POPOV

When thousands of Georgians protested this week to demand a bill similar to controversial Kremlin legislation be scrapped, some Russian exiles joined rallies that would have been unthinkable in their homeland.

Viktor Lyagushkin, 52, is one of tens of thousands of Russians who fled to Georgia in the aftermath of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

He joined the mass protests in Tbilisi that erupted after parliament gave initial backing to a bill on “foreign agents” reminiscent of Russian legislation used to suppress Kremlin critics.

Lyagushkin said “many” Russians but also Ukrainians had joined several days of the anti-government protests in Tbilisi this week.

“The possibility of going out and expressing disagreement is important for them because that’s what they were deprived of in Russia,” he said.

The legislation was dropped after three days of youth-led protests and an outcry from the West.

“I decided to participate because I am not indifferent to the fate of Georgia,” Lyagushkin added.

“I have many Georgian friends and I wanted to support them,” said the National Geographic photographer, dressed in yellow-and-blue clothes in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

Lyagushkin used to live between Moscow, Kyiv, and Tbilisi before settling in Georgia after the Kremlin unleashed an all-out war on Ukraine in 2022.

– ‘I had to show support’ –

Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, Russian authorities have ramped up a crackdown on dissent, jailing opposition activists or forcing them into exile.

Since the beginning of the war, thousands of cases were opened against Russians for “discrediting” Moscow’s army and some people were jailed.

Lyagushkin said he did not think that a popular opposition movement similar to what he has seen in Georgia could emerge in Russia.

He likened the protests in Georgia to a popular uprising in Kyiv that ousted Kremlin-friendly leaders from power in 2014, sparking a confrontation with Russia.

Bogdana Vashchenko, a Ukrainian who lived in Moscow for more than a decade, could not agree more.

The 46-year-old writer and journalist, who now lives in Tbilisi, took part in protests in the South Caucasus country together with Lyagushkin.

“As a Ukrainian and a human, I knew I had to show support for Georgia and my Georgian friends,” she told AFP.

Vashchenko said “the lies” of the Georgian ruling party were similar to those of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014.

“It’s as if they had the same agenda, the same plan,” she said.

– ‘Nothing will change’ –


But some Russian exiles here have other issues on their mind and seem indifferent to the recent political turmoil.

In bars and cafés just a few streets from where protests had taken place outside parliament, their conversations on Friday night centred around rising electricity prices, immigration prospects, and memories of their homeland.

Vladimir Kirsanov, who is in his thirties, arrived in Georgia in September after Putin announced a military mobilisation. He now wants to move to Argentina together with his partner Margarita, but they are not sure they can afford the move.

“Nothing will change in Russia for the next 10 years,” said Kirsanov, adding that he had no interest in meddling in Georgia’s affairs.

He also does not want to have problems with law enforcement in Georgia, where he has to stay for at least six months to be able to apply for a Schengen visa.

The Georgian authorities have recently come under criticism from rights groups and the opposition for barring some Kremlin critics from entering the country. Some observers have warned of the authorities’ dangerous drift towards Moscow.

Vashchenko sees the Russian people’s political apathy as the “root of evil” that bedevils the country.

She said it was important to stand by Georgia, which fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008. And a new war between Russia and Georgia could not be ruled out, she added.

“Yes, we are afraid, and I think Georgians are also afraid of the possibility of an invasion,” she said.

“But if we stay home in fear, then they will definitely come.”

Georgia targets ‘foreign agents’ as critics allege tilt to Putin

07.03.2023

Opposition parties, media and civil society groups have denounced what they call “the Russian law”

Georgia’s muted response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has already drawn strong criticism inside the country

Photo credit: Shutterstock

For nearly two decades since the 2003 “Rose Revolution,” Georgia sought to escape Russia’s shadow by integrating itself with the European Union and NATO. 

Now, critics say, it risks tilting back toward Moscow, especially as the government pushes through legislation similar to an instrument President Vladimir Putin used to crush dissent in Russia.

A draft “foreign agent” bill that lawmakers began to debate last week would target media and non-governmental organizations in an initiative backed by the ruling Georgian Dream party. It would indirectly promote Russian interests by curbing the influence of groups that largely rely on funding from the US and Europe.

Georgia’s muted response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has already drawn strong criticism inside the country — which fought a brief 2008 war with Russia — and from officials in Kyiv. 

“The intention of the authors of the Georgian bill is not to control the influence of the enemy country,” Nino Lapiashvili, director of Tbilisi State University’s Institute for European Studies, said by phone “It’s an unjustified attempt to retaliate against the substantiated criticism of governmental policies of those Georgian civil society organizations that are financed by the EU, USA or other Western strategic partners.”

The standoff over the draft law could culminate within days

Fines, Jail

The proposal threatens fines and imprisonment for up to five years to organizations or individuals who receive at least 20% of their income from abroad and fail to register with the government as an “agent of foreign influence.”

The standoff over the draft law could culminate within days as the proposed legislation makes its way through parliament, worsening tensions in the streets. Police arrested at least 36 people at protests Thursday outside parliament, with more than half still in detention.

Opposition parties, media and civil society groups have denounced what they call “the Russian law,” while leading business associations in Georgia warned the measure risks undermining the Caucasus republic’s already fading chances of gaining EU membership. President Salome Zourabichvili, who was elected as Georgian Dream’s candidate, has said she’ll veto the law, which has been sharply criticized by the EU and the US. 

Balancing Act

Although Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili condemned Russia’s “unjustified” aggression against Ukraine, he hasn’t imposed sanctions on Russia and has refused to provide military aid to Kyiv, accusing opponents of his policy of seeking to “create a second front in Georgia.” 

The ability to maintain trade ties with Russia, alongside the arrival of tens of thousands fleeing the Kremlin’s mobilization, has meant a boon for the $25 billion economy. It’s resulted in what a former central bank governor has called a “windfall” revenue of about $2 billion last year, more than quintuple what Georgia received in 2021.

The controversy has erupted at a sensitive time for Georgia. Former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who led the 2003 pro-western revolution, is languishing in prison as the government in Tbilisi faces increasingly loud expressions of concern for his health from leaders in Europe and in Moldova and Ukraine, which last year moved ahead of Georgia in the race for EU membership. 

Former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who led the 2003 pro-western revolution, is languishing in prison

The government says Saakashvili crossed into the country illegally in 2021 and that his health is being provided for. 

Supporters say the law is necessary to ensure political “transparency” and insist that it’s similar to the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the US. 

The legislation will enable “society to be informed about who is who,” said Eka Sepashvili, a member of the People’s Power faction in Georgia’s parliament that proposed the legislation with backing from Georgian Dream.

Sepashvili said two different versions of the bill adopted by parliament will be sent to the Venice Commission for review and the final draft will depend on which one it approves. Voting in the final two readings will take place after receiving the opinion of the Council of Europe’s legal advisory body, she said.

Many Georgian opposition media outlets and non-governmental organizations rallying outside the parliament building in the capital, Tbilisi, said they’d refuse to register should the law require them to do so. Paata Zakareishvili, a political analyst and former government official, said he’d rather go to jail. 

“Let them arrest me, I don’t care,” he told reporters Sunday.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

US government appeals approval of Voyager sale

March 12, 2023

CNA – The United States (US) Department Justice (DOJ) has appealed a court order approving Voyager Digital’s bankruptcy plan, creating a new hurdle for the crypto lender’s plan to sell its assets and transfer its customers to Binance.US in a deal valued at USD1.3 billion.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Office of the US Trustee, the DOJ bankruptcy watchdog, filed a notice of appeal on Thursday in US bankruptcy court in Manhattan.

US Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles, who is overseeing Voyager’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, had approved Voyager’s restructuring plan, which is built around the acquisition by crypto exchange Binance.US, at a hearing on Tuesday after overruling objections from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and DOJ.

Lawyers for the US Trustee and US Attorney’s office spoke up at hearings to consider Voyager’s bankruptcy plan to oppose provisions Voyager included to protect employees from potential legal claims resulting from actions taken during the bankruptcy.

They argued that Wiles’ order approving the plan was written too broadly, potentially preventing the government from bringing regulatory enforcement actions or criminal charges if misconduct was discovered later.

Wiles disagreed, saying that Voyager should not be penalised for carrying out a court-approved sale to Binance.US.

If the DOJ or any government agency had evidence of misconduct specifically related to the bankruptcy, they should have presented it in court, Wiles said.

 About Xi Jinping’s Third Term Trending on Weibo A hashtag related to Xi Jinping’s third term received over 1.2 billion views on Weibo.

 March 11, 2023

By Manya Koetse 

It is the news that was widely expected yet still made international headlines on Friday, March 10: Xi Jinping secured his third term as president. 

The official appointment happened after the members of the National People’s Congress (NPC) voted unanimously for Xi Jinping. There was no other candidate. In February 2018, it was announced that the constitution of mainland China would change in some important ways, including the indefinite rule for Xi Jinping after his second five-year term of the presidency would end in 2023. 

At that time, What’s on Weibo reported how the news of a third Xi Jinping term caused some consternation on Chinese social media, where some called the idea of Xi’s potential indefinite rule “scary” and some netizens joked about “our emperor has received the Mandate of Heaven, so we have to kneel and accept.” 

Now, three years later, there is less room for such discussions at a time of the Two Sessions, when the social media environment is always more controlled. The online discourse surrounding Xi Jinping is also less playful than before. In 2017, during the 19th Party Congress, an online game that allowed netizens to “clap” for Xi became a social media hit. 

Around the same time, state media outlets published short videos or gifs featuring Xi as a cartoon character. In 2023, the overall tone of state media reports on Xi is much more serious. On Friday, Xi Jinping’s third term went top trending on Weibo, where one related topic received over 800 million views. A day later the hashtag had over 1.2 billion clicks (#习近平当选中华人民共和国主席#​). 

While refreshing and searching on the Weibo platform, some comment sections were closing and opening, some videos went online and offline, and even Xi’s own name was temporarily unsearchable on the Weibo site, suggesting that online control systems were going into overdrive. 

A video of Xi Jinping taking his oath received over 75 million views (times played) and over 14,000 comments on Weibo. “Serve the people,” “congratulations,” and “strong country, happy people,” were among the typical comments listed in the reply sections below the news posts on Xi’s third term.

 Another hashtag was also promoted on Chinese social media by state broadcaster CCTV, namely that of Xi Jinping always focusing on putting the people first (#始终把人民放在心中最高的位置#). The phrase “the people first” (人民至上 rénmín zhìshàng), also “putting the people in the first place,” is an important part of the Party’s ‘people-based, people-oriented’ governing concept. The phrase became especially relevant as part of Xi Jinping’s now-famous “put people and their life first” slogan (人民至上，生命至上, rénmín zhìshàng, shēngmìng zhìshàng), which became one of the most important official phrases of 2020 in light of the fight against Covid19. By Manya Koetse    

 https://www.whatsonweibo.com/about-xi-jinpings-third-term-trending-on-weibo/

Ford to cut 1,100 jobs in Spain after other European layoffs

March 12, 2023

MADRID (AP) – Ford Motor Co announced on Friday that it will cut around 1,100 jobs at its plant in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia.

The cuts are in addition to the 2,300 layoffs largely in Germany and the United Kingdom that the automaker announced last month as part of a “leaner, more competitive cost structure in Europe”.

Ford Spain said in a statement that it notified unions on Friday of what it described as “a profound restructuring of its operations”. Ford has recently championed the Valencia plant as its preferred site to assemble “next-generation” electric vehicles on the continent.

UGT union spokesman José Luis Parra Navarro said the workforce would become “surplus” when the plant switched to making electric cars because the work “requires less labour”.

The plant is Ford’s only such facility in Spain and employs 5,400 people. The job cuts were “mainly due to the already announced discontinuing production of the S-Max and Galaxy models in April 2023,” Ford Spain said in an email.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based company has a strategy to offer an all-electric fleet in Europe by 2035 and says production of its first European-built electric car is expected to start later this year.

The job cuts come amid a sea change in the global auto industry from gas-guzzling combustion engines to electric vehicles.

Governments are pushing to reduce the emissions that contribute to climate change, and a resulting race to develop electric vehicles has generated intense competition among automakers.

In January, Ford announced a new solar power plant had opened at the Valencia facility as it looks to become a carbon-neutral business.

Chicago Residents Continue to Die in Buildings with Safety Violations

At least 53 people have died in fires since a 2021 probe exposed Chicago's deeply flawed system for identifying and responding to life-threatening safety issues.


By Adriana Pérez
Source Chicago Tribune (TNS)
Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune (TNS)

March 11, 2023

This building had a history of violations dating back to 2008. No smoke alarms were present when a woman died in April 2022.

LONG READ

Larry Burns had been planning a wedding reception last May in Mississippi and was looking forward to his mother coming from her home in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.

A smart, fashionable woman who could make a mean taco salad, Herrsterstine Burns, 57, was the rock of the family, whether it was helping a loved one get clothes or co-signing a loan, her family recalled.

But in the early morning hours of April 4 last year, a fire broke out in Burns’ apartment. She was taken to the hospital with severe burns and ravaged lungs.

Three weeks later, Burns was dead. Her great-granddaughter, London, then 3, was also injured in the fire and spent a month in the hospital with burns. For the rest of her life, London will carry those scars.

After the fire in the 500 block of North Central Avenue, investigators found that the apartment had no smoke alarms, even though records show city inspectors had visited the building as recently as early 2021 in response to tenant complaints about various issues, including water leaks and power outages. The building has a history of documented fire safety violations going back to at least 2008 with multiple visits from city inspectors over the years.

“She would have heard some smoke detectors go off in there. She would have got up,” said Burns’ granddaughter, Danielle Jones. “So I feel like … that really played a big part of my grandma losing her life.”

“The city needs to step their game up,” said Larry Burns, 39.

Chicago’s deeply flawed system for identifying and responding to life-threatening safety issues in residential buildings was exposed in a 2021 investigation by the Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune. Reporters documented dozens of fire deaths in buildings where city regulators had been warned of potential fire hazards but failed to crack down on property owners in time.

Poor record-keeping by the Department of Buildings, inconsistent follow-through from inspectors and the lack of any proactive inspection regimen all contributed to an urgent problem that continues to put city residents in peril, nearly two years later.


In the 21 months after the BGA/Tribune investigation was published, at least 53 more people died in residential fires in Chicago. Five were in fires where the city was told of safety issues and failed to ensure the problems were addressed, according to a review of the most recently available records. Another 21 fatal fires occurred in buildings with fire safety issues that had not been inspected by the city in at least a decade — most of them on the South and West sides.

“There are extraordinary blind spots, and the blind spots have consequences,” said former city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson. “The entire bureaucratic system is suffused with unfunded and under-funded mandates … and we leave inspectors and others in the system burdened with enforcement that they don’t have the resources for.”

After the investigation came out, Mayor Lori Lightfoot quickly dismissed the findings as remnants of an old system that predated her administration.

“It’s an interesting historical piece, but I have to deal with the here and now,” Lightfoot said at an April 2021 news conference. “There’s a lot that’s been done in the two years I’ve been mayor to make sure that we’re stepping up enforcement of building code violations, making sure we’ve got a streamlined process for holding people accountable and not just having a set of random lists that really mean nothing.

“So I think we have stepped up and done some very good work,” she added.

In fact, her administration has taken few steps to improve the systemic failings exposed in the investigation, which later won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. And Chicago residents have continued to die in fires that occur in buildings with serious safety issues that city regulators had opportunities to address.


A 66-year-old man died in a fire in April 2021 in a building in the 7900 block of South Phillips Avenue that had been previously cited for a lack of smoke alarms and a dangerous porch in need of repairs. A 67-year-old man was fatally burned in a kitchen fire in a South Shore apartment building in September 2022 that failed an inspection months earlier. And a 63-year-old woman died following an electrical fire in her Uptown home in July 2022 where previous violations for faulty wiring had gone unaddressed.

Following Lightfoot’s election loss on Feb. 28, the failed building safety system will soon be the responsibility of a different mayor — either Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson or former Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas, depending on the outcome of the April 4 runoff. In response to questions, both candidates expressed willingness to reexamine the system.

The Lightfoot administration, for its part, has resisted an effort from some City Council members to create the kind of proactive, regular inspection process being adopted by other U.S. cities.

The Department of Buildings has maintained an antiquated, disorganized documentation system that makes it nearly impossible to know which buildings are most dangerous, even as many peer cities maintain landlord registries.


Chicago’s existing complaint-based inspection protocol is slow and inconsistent, and the city has few options to ensure safety issues are fixed — while other cities have developed innovative and effective methods of prompting landlords to act.

In the case of Burns’ building, inspectors visited the property more than a dozen times between 2008 and 2011, city records show. The building racked up more than 50 violations, including some for exposed wires, a lack of smoke alarms and heating issues that led tenants to use their stoves to keep warm.

The city took the property owner to court in 2011, and a judge dismissed the case in 2014 after finding “substantial compliance” with orders to fix the building. Court records offer no evidence that the issues had been addressed, and city officials did not provide any documentation in response to reporters’ requests. Records obtained from the city’s 311 archive show another series of building complaints reached city officials in 2020, but the Buildings Department dismissed them after inspectors visited the property a few months later in early 2021 and indicated they found no evidence to substantiate the complaints.

Attorneys for Masada Management, which was the property manager for the Central Avenue building at the time of the fire, said in a statement that the September 2021 apartment lease had a signed acknowledgment that the unit had functional smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and that the tenant was responsible for replacing the batteries and notifying management if the devices stopped working.

Reactive inspections

Other cities have built more sophisticated systems to help ensure their residents are safe, with inspectors conducting routine safety checks of buildings that have a history of problems.

In Minneapolis, the municipal building inspection team uses only six out of 70 employees to respond to complaints. The rest conduct safety checks in rotations through a tiered system that prioritizes buildings with histories of violations or scofflaw landlords.

“We want to make sure that life safety is at the optimal, and that we’re not placing people at risk,” said Enrique Velázquez, director of the Minneapolis Division of Inspection Services. “We wanted to make sure the process was repeatable, and that it was fair and equitable across the entire city.”

Each building is given a score based on its inspection history. More weight is given to life safety violations, such as hazardous wiring or a lack of smoke alarms, than to such smaller issues as overgrown grass or insect infestations.


Depending on each building’s score, it may be visited by inspectors as often as every year or as seldom as every eight.

“You’re sending a signal to landlords that if you don’t maintain your property, we’ll be on your back — and if you do maintain your property, we’ll leave you alone,” said Alan Mallach with the Center for Community Progress, a Michigan-based nonprofit dedicated to neighborhood development and building regulation. Mallach called Minneapolis a “model” for building code enforcement.

Other cities, such as Boston, are required by law to conduct rolling proactive inspections over a specific time period — every five years is common.

Chicago mandates some checks for high-rise apartment buildings that are more than 80 feet tall, but the city has no policy of proactive inspections for other residential buildings.

The city’s building code used to require that every multifamily residential building three stories or taller be inspected at least once per year. But Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed the City Council to scuttle the requirement as part of a 2017 code revamp that let officials conduct inspections “as often as deemed necessary.”

Under the existing system, building inspectors are assigned stacks of complaints every day and told to follow up on as many properties as time permits. Inspectors can easily become overwhelmed; a 2018 audit by a city watchdog office found a backlog of more than 5,000 unresolved complaints dating back as many as five years.


City buildings officials have defended that complaint-driven process, saying it directs them to the properties needing the most attention.

Chicago Department of Buildings Commissioner Matthew Beaudet declined to be interviewed, and a spokesman for the department declined to comment when asked why the department continues to rely on complaint-based inspections. But Beaudet defended the system in an interview with the BGA and Tribune for their 2021 investigation, saying complaints “will tell us exactly where we need to be.”

Any city that reacts only to complaints is “by definition” not equipped to address buildings before they become dangerous, Mallach said. It also fails to account for tenants who hesitate to complain for fear of retaliation from their landlords.

Greg Miao, a senior attorney with the California-based nonprofit research firm ChangeLab Solutions, has advocated for cities to shift to proactive housing inspection systems, arguing that in the long run it would reduce complaints and make enforcement more manageable.

“We’re never going to get rid of a targeted enforcement program that goes after the worst of the worst,” Miao said. “One way to free up resources to do that is to get everyone else into a better situation where they’re constantly maintaining their properties.”

Eric Patton Smith, the father of a 7-year-old girl who died in a South Side apartment fire in 2014, said a proactive inspection system could have flagged the lack of a smoke alarm in the unit. Patton Smith pushed the city to toughen its regulations after his loss.

“They’re not going out in force. They’re not doing checks,” Patton Smith said. “If my baby had woken up two, three minutes earlier, we wouldn’t be here today.”
Poor record-keeping

Like Chicago, Philadelphia has no protocol for safety checks on buildings unless residents file complaints.

But Philadelphia officials have at least one tool that their Chicago counterparts lack: an exhaustive database of who owns every rental property.

To get a rental license in Philadelphia, “you have to tell (the city) that you’re renting, and what the unit is, and you have to pay an annual fee,” said Karen Black, a Philadelphia-based housing researcher and consultant.

Housing advocates have called on Chicago to build a similar registry as a baseline for enforcement. But Chicago officials have resisted, arguing they already have ways to determine property ownership.

Advocates counter that having a registry available would save time.

Property owners can be hidden in layers of shell companies, and contact information may lead to someone only loosely tied to the property. A landlord registry could ensure city officials have ready access to owners, and “if the person is not reasonably local, have a local agent or representative who can be reached in case of emergencies,” Mallach said.

“Let’s say there’s a fire in a building or a boiler burst in the middle of winter, and the city needs to reach someone to deal with it in a hurry.” Mallach said. “If the name and the address (in tax or deed records) says ‘Hong Kong, China,’ that’s no use.”

The city’s inadequate record-keeping on rental properties was a major conclusion of a 2018 audit of the Department of Buildings by the city’s inspector general. The audit found department employees complained of an antiquated software system that required inspectors to print 311 reports, take notes by hand in the field and return to their office to type results into a database. As a result, many serious complaints were addressed months late or dismissed prematurely, investigators found.

“It means inspectors can’t rely on the system to give them the full picture of the property, its owner, its violation history, (or) the rigor and pace of responses in the past,” Ferguson said. “You don’t have the full context, which means you really have to operate somewhat transactionally on the basis of what’s being raised in the moment.”

A follow-up report published in November 2019, six months after Lightfoot took office, found that the department had done little to improve its data collection. Despite promises to update the department’s software — which another inspector’s report called “extremely limited” and error prone — city officials have yet to adopt a new system.

A software update is expected to be wrapped up by 2025, according to a city spokesperson.

The inspector general’s audit also found that inspectors were consistently falling short of a city requirement that they investigate every complaint within three weeks of receiving it, at times taking months. Auditors found some complaints were closed without evidence the issue was addressed; others never got a response.

The inspector general’s office recommended that the department strike the three-week requirement and substitute deadlines based on its capabilities.

City leaders followed through by scuttling the requirement but did not set new goals; nor did they find a way to speed up response times.

“There’s plenty of argument or discussion to be had about whether (the response deadline) was set at the right level, or if 30 or 45 days was more appropriate,” Ferguson said. “But they didn’t do that. There was no analysis done.

Chicago building inspectors also have wide leeway in how hard they crack down on landlords with code violations. Sociologist Robin Bartram noted the phenomenon in her 2022 book “Stacked Decks,” for which she shadowed Chicago building inspectors for months.

With more than 1,100 potential violations on the books, the city’s building code “demands discretionary decisions,” Bartram wrote. “Some issues are more easily quantifiable. … More often, though, it is down to inspectors to decide what conditions amount to a violation.”

She found inspectors took seriously their responsibility to cite collapsing porches, missing smoke alarms or other dangerous conditions, and many take “stabs at justice” by cracking down on landlords they perceive to be more affluent than small-time property owners.

But the decisions by inspectors, most of whom are white men, affect which properties are prioritized. An analysis by Bartram of violations and 311 complaints in the city between 2006 and 2015 found that building complaints were overwhelmingly concentrated in South and West side neighborhoods, such as Englewood and North Lawndale. Inspectors, however, used their discretion to cite more violations per complaint on the North and Northwest sides than they did on the South Side.

The subjective system is a red flag for Miao.

“Moving away from wide discretion by individuals is really important,” Miao said. “We get a lot of inconsistency, it sometimes has some racial or socioeconomic overlays to how that discretion is exercised, it’s hard to track and it leads to a lot of bitter feelings on everyone’s part.”
Lack of follow-up

Another recent instance of the city’s inconsistent inspections and failure to follow up involves the fatal fire on May 12, 2021, at an apartment complex in the 7900 block of South Maryland Avenue. Richard Bramwell, 78, died in the fire from burns and smoke inhalation, records show.

The building had a history of lax enforcement after repeated findings of violations, according to records. For instance, on March 3, 2016, the building failed an inspection for lacking smoke detectors and having exposed electrical outlets.

On April 15, 2019, the building racked up numerous violations, including a note to “install an emergency lighting system.” The case was closed, but individual violations were marked as open and it was noted as an “active case” in the Department of Buildings’ overview of inspection history.

On Jan. 6, 2020, the building once again failed an inspection because of violations that included the obstruction of an exit way. Inspectors noted the property owners should install and maintain approved smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.

There were no working smoke detectors in the downstairs unit where Bramwell inhaled a fatal dose of smoke, according to fire department records.

Shacara Montgomery, 31, saw the effects of the Maryland Avenue fire firsthand, as her grandparents, Lovelace and Evelyn Montgomery, Bramwell’s upstairs neighbors, are just now getting back on their feet after the fire drove them out of their home.

“It’s been a long year and a half with them not having anywhere to stay of their own,” Shacara Montgomery said.

Her grandparents heard their smoke detectors go off the night of the fire, which is why they made it out in time, she said. “I think that if they didn’t have them, she wouldn’t have made it out … and he would have stayed back with her,” she said.

Other cities have systems in place to ensure enforcement.

When a Los Angeles landlord resists a city order to fix an unsafe building, it triggers a long chain of events designed to spur the property owner to action.

The Los Angeles Housing Department can enter the property into a city program that lets some tenants immediately halve their rent payments and send any additional money into an escrow account that landlords can access only to pay for repairs. Or the department can invoke its urgent repairs program in which the city hires its own contractors to fix life-threatening hazards and sends the landlord the bill.

Those processes grew out of an enforcement program that Los Angeles leaders developed in the 1990s to crack down on negligent landlords.

The new program “was important because we found that a lot of tenants were intimidated and scared to complain about conditions … they feared eviction, and if they were undocumented, they feared immigration issues,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Coalition for Economic Survival. “So this took the burden off the tenants and protected them from repercussions from a landlord who would target them for complaining.”

Gross, whose organization was recruited by the city of Los Angeles to help promote the new program to tenants, said the programs have been successful.

“I’ve always been bewildered by Chicago,” Gross said. “New York and L.A. have all these programs — how does Chicago not?”

One of the only options available to Chicago officials — other than to drag landlords to court — is to place them on the city’s Building Code Scofflaw List.

The list dates back to 2015, when Patton Smith, whose daughter had died one year earlier, lobbied the Emanuel administration for an ordinance that would have required landlords to post color-coded signs outside their buildings noting their violation histories.

Instead, the City Council passed an ordinance to stop city contracts being awarded to anyone on a list of so-called problem landlords.

“I thought, OK, it’s a start,” Patton Smith said. “It puts the onus on these real estate owners, and hell, it may save some people.”

The city abandoned the list less than two years later.

“In hindsight, I wish I would have told them to do the color coding or nothing,” Patton Smith said.

The Lightfoot administration revived the scofflaw list in 2021 shortly before the BGA/Tribune investigation was published.

The list includes only properties that have been tied up in housing court for at least 18 months or that have been documented by the Buildings Department to have “immediate hazards.” It excludes owner-occupied properties with four or fewer units, and it fails to include unsafe buildings that have either flown under the city’s radar or have escaped legal scrutiny.

Chicago landlords whose buildings are on the list are ineligible for city incentives, including tax breaks or zoning changes, and are subject to annual inspections. But there are no other penalties.

Patton Smith wrote an October 2021 op-ed excoriating the measure, which he derided in a later interview as Lightfoot’s “scapegoat list.”

The list, updated once every six months, currently includes 271 properties. None has been the site of a fatal fire since 2021.

“The list doesn’t have any actual teeth to it, and if you’re on it, it’s just like, who cares?” said John Bartlett, director of the Chicago-based Metropolitan Tenants Organization, a local tenants’ rights group, also known as MTO. “And they don’t even get the worst landlords on there.”

Chicago officials have also touted the city’s Troubled Buildings Initiative, which works with private nonprofits to scoop up derelict properties from negligent or under-resourced landlords and convey them to responsible developers for demolition and reconstruction. City officials have loose criteria for buildings to be included in the program and are referred by individuals in one corner of the city’s bureaucracy or another, according to Anthony Simpkins, president and CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, which helps facilitate the program.

“Department of Buildings inspectors may say, ‘We’ve got a particularly troubled building,’ and we get a lot of referrals from aldermen,” Simpkins said. Like the rest of the city’s inspection and enforcement regime, the initiative is “complaint-driven,” he said.
Advocates propose solution

Some momentum is building for a proactive inspection system in Chicago.

MTO led the effort to draft a plan to establish a rental registry and gradually implement proactive inspections. The proposal, introduced to the City Council in December, was partly inspired by the system in Los Angeles, advocates said.

Its first major step would create a registry of rental housing units to keep track of building ownership. Landlords would be required to pay a registration fee to support the program, but landlords in owner-occupied buildings with six units or fewer would be exempt if they meet certain income standards.

The registry would lay the groundwork for the main thrust of the ordinance: a pilot program for proactive, periodic building inspections. The checks would be conducted by a new team of building inspectors housed under the Chicago Department of Public Health.

The three-year pilot program would be implemented in three wards — the 20th Ward on the South Side, the 22nd Ward on the Southwest Side and the 49th Ward on the Far North Side — and then potentially expanded throughout the city.

Instead of investigating all possible violations, the inspections would focus on a more pared-down list of issues critical to tenant safety, such as smoke alarms, adequate heating, lead paint exposure and water leaks.

The ordinance would also set a clear timeline for resolving code violations.

Critics of the ordinance say the plan would be too expensive and is not feasible in a city as large as Chicago.

Lightfoot said during a Feb. 16 news conference that she had not read the ordinance.

“What you’re suggesting is, I think, potentially a burden on homeowners, but I’d like to see the details of it,” the mayor said when asked by a reporter. “As with all legislation, the devil is in the details. But certainly, we’ve been very aggressive when we’ve seen bad buildings, both commercial and residential, and we’ll continue to be aggressive on that front.”

A spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public Health declined to answer when asked for the department’s position on the proposed ordinance.

Ferguson, the former inspector general, argues that “Chicago is perfectly capable” of conducting proactive safety inspections.

“It’s a matter of culture and it’s a matter of political will,” Ferguson said.

Arguments that proactive inspections are too expensive or aren’t feasible are often “red herrings,” said Miao, the policy researcher.

“The story is pretty consistent, that when these programs first go out, they catch a heck of a lot of things,” Miao said. “And then they slowly work basically as an incentive to lift the boat of all the housing stock in the community.”

Other critics of the Healthy Homes ordinance say regular inspections would be invasive for tenants who don’t want city officials showing up unannounced. The implementation of proactive inspections in north suburban Zion was met with a lawsuit and, ultimately, a federal consent decree that barred the city from punishing landlords and tenants who refuse to allow inspectors entry.

The proposed Healthy Homes ordinance requires that Chicago landlords give tenants seven days’ advance written notice before an inspection. Landlords could reschedule proactive inspections up to 14 days before the original date. Tenants could leave notes for the inspector if they are not home.

Authors of the ordinance sought to insulate it from legal challenges by specifying that inspectors would need warrants if both tenants and landlords deny entry.

A spokesman for Johnson said in a statement Wednesday that the candidate supports the creation of an apartment registry and a proactive building safety inspection system “so long as it does not place an undue burden on residents and does not violate their privacy.”

A spokesperson for Vallas’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But the candidate wrote in a January Tribune questionnaire that he would order a “comprehensive evaluation” of the city’s building inspection and enforcement system to align the city with national best practices and to improve safety.

Patton Smith said he does not blame Lightfoot, her Buildings Department or the City Council for the city’s failing building enforcement system. But he does blame them for doing nothing to fix it.

“It may have been happening before you got there, but when you come in as mayor, this problem gets put on your plate,” Patton Smith said. “Politicians get elected, and you’d like them to do something, to show that they care. But I don’t see them doing anything.”

This story is a collaboration between the Tribune and the Illinois Answers Project, a nonpartisan investigations and solutions journalism news organization published by the Better Government Association. Adriana Pérez is a Tribune reporter; Alex Nitkin and Kelli Duncan are reporters with the Illinois Answers Project. Tribune reporter Robert McCoppin also contributed to this story.

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Canada Parliament questions Google execs over news-blocking test

March 12, 2023

CNA – Alphabet Inc’s Google will stop blocking news articles from some Canadian users’ search results on March 16, a company executive told a Canadian Parliamentary panel investigating the tech firm on Friday.

Last month, Google started testing limited news censorship as a potential response to a Canadian government bill that aims to compel online platforms to pay publishers in Canada for news content.

Google has claimed that the test is like thousands of other product tests the company conducts on a regular basis.

The tests, which the company says affected less than four per cent of Canadian users, began on February 9 and were scheduled to run for five weeks. Speaking to a Parliamentary committee investigating the tests, Google’s Public Policy Manager Jason Kee confirmed that the tests would end next week.

“I want to underline these are just tests. No decisions have been made about product changes,” Kee said.

Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was a “terrible mistake” for Google to block news content in reaction to “Online News Act”, a government bill that created rules for platforms like Meta’s Facebook and Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers.

“It really surprises me that Google has decided that they’d rather prevent Canadians from accessing news than actually paying journalists for the work they do,” he said at the time.

During the panel, questions were raised about local journalism outlets, like the 13-14 local, weekly papers that MP Martin Shields has in his riding.

“Blocking is something that I think irritates the local people, the grassroots people.

“The unintended consequences here of this move, I don’t think is a way to negotiate and I think it’s a mistake on your part,” Shields said to head of Google Canada Sabrina Geremia.

Geremia said Google is a contributor to news in Canada, driving 3.6 billion free visits from Canadians visiting links to news sites, and has licensing agreements in place with over 150 publications coast to coast.

Facebook has also raised concerns about the legislation and warned it might be forced to block news-sharing on its platform.

Canada’s news media industry has asked the government for more regulation of tech companies to allow the industry to recoup financial losses it has suffered in the years that the tech giants steadily gained greater market share of advertising.

Ottawa’s proposal is similar to a ground-breaking law that Australia passed in 2021, which too triggered threats from Google and Facebook to curtail their services.

Both eventually struck deals with Australian media companies after a series of amendments to the legislation were offered.