Endocrine Society supports EPA rule regulating “forever chemicals” in drinking water

Society urges EPA to regulate PFAS as a class of chemicals

Business Announcement

THE ENDOCRINE SOCIETY

The Endocrine Society supports a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule which includes provisions to regulate several per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—including PFOA and PFOS—found in our drinking water.

The proposed regulation sets an aggressive limit for these PFAS and their mixtures and acknowledges effects at extremely low levels by proposing a health based Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCGL) of zero. This is the first time the government has regulated a new chemical in drinking water in more than 30 years.

The new rule would require major water treatment upgrades at utilities across the country.

PFAS are manmade chemicals used as oil and water repellents and coatings for common products including cookware, carpets and textiles. PFAS chemicals can contaminate drinking water supplies near facilities where the chemicals are used.

These endocrine-disrupting chemicals do not break down when they are released into the environment, and they continue to accumulate over time. They pose health dangers at incredibly low levels and have been linked to endocrine disorders such as cancer, thyroid disruption and reproductive difficulties.

While this rule makes important progress towards reducing PFAS in drinking water to improve public health, continued vigilance and a more comprehensive class-based approach will remain necessary as PFAS comprise a large and complex class of chemicals.

Comparison with Canada highlights poor access to US methadone treatment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

SPOKANE, Wash.—People living in the United States must travel significantly farther to access methadone treatment for opioid addiction than Canadians, suggests a new study led by Washington State University researchers.

Published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, the researchers’ analysis showed that the average driving distance to the closest methadone clinic accepting new patients was more than three times greater in the U.S. compared to Canada. When limiting their analysis to clinics that could provide treatment within 48 hours the difference was even larger, with those in the U.S. having to travel more than five times farther than their neighbors north of the border.

“Our research suggests that the U.S. could benefit from adopting Canada’s more flexible regulatory approach to methadone treatment, which is associated with greater availability of timely treatment, especially in rural areas,” said lead study author Ofer Amram, an assistant professor in the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.

Amram explained that those seeking methadone treatment in the U.S. must start their treatment and receive their daily dose of methadone at federally approved treatment clinics, which in rural parts of the country can be far and few between. In Canada, methadone is prescribed not only in more widely available treatment clinics but also through trained primary care providers. Once treatment has started, Canadian patients can pick up their daily methadone dose at a local pharmacy.

The WSU team, who worked with researchers at Yale University and Simon Fraser University in Canada on the study, analyzed data collected from 563 methadone clinics accepting Medicaid or provincial insurance. These clinics were located in 14 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces that had the highest opioid overdose rates within each country. The researchers calculated the driving distance from 17,611 census tracts within those states and provinces to the nearest clinic accepting new patients. After adjusting for differences in population density and demographics, they found that U.S. census tracts were an average of 11.6 miles farther from the closest methadone clinic accepting new patients. For clinics that could take in new patients within 48 hours, the distance gap was even wider at an average of 25.1 miles farther in the U.S. than in Canada.

For rural areas of the U.S. where the population is more spread out, the researchers found that access to a clinic providing treatment within 48 hours required lengthy drives of as many of 138 miles. Amram said this was especially true for rural areas of Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri.

Amram noted that their comparison only looked at methadone treatment clinics—Canadian primary care providers prescribing methadone were not included.

“What that tells us is that the actual differences in treatment accessibility between the U.S. and Canada are even larger than our study suggests,” he said.

Data for the study were collected between mid-May and mid-June 2020, when both the U.S. and Canada had COVID-19 related policy exemptions in place that temporarily increased access to take-home methadone doses to facilitate social distancing. A previous study led by the WSU investigators showed that this increased flexibility in take-home dosing did not lead to worse treatment outcomes. The study was cited in recent guidance issued by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that extends methadone take-home flexibilities for one year past the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, which is set to expire on May 11.

“Our work adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that better outcomes may be achieved by making these changes permanent along with expanding treatment to additional outpatient settings such as primary care clinics and community pharmacies,” Amram said. “Given the magnitude of the opioid overdose crisis, it’s important that we consider all the tools available to us to reduce barriers to treatment.”

 

---

JOURNAL

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

DOI

10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.109801 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Availability of timely methadone treatment in the United States and Canada during COVID-19: A census tract-level analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Apr-2023

Minimizing electric vehicles’ impact on the grid

Careful planning of charging station placement could lessen or eliminate the need for new power plants, a new study shows.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

National and global plans to combat climate change include increasing the electrification of vehicles and the percentage of electricity generated from renewable sources. But some projections show that these trends might require costly new power plants to meet peak loads in the evening when cars are plugged in after the workday. What’s more, overproduction of power from solar farms during the daytime can waste valuable electricity-generation capacity.

In a new study, MIT researchers have found that it’s possible to mitigate or eliminate both these problems without the need for advanced technological systems of connected devices and real-time communications, which could add to costs and energy consumption. Instead, encouraging the placing of charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) in strategic ways, rather than letting them spring up anywhere, and setting up systems to initiate car charging at delayed times could potentially make all the difference.

The study, which will be published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, is by Zachary Needell PhD ’22, postdoc Wei Wei, and Professor Jessika Trancik of MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society.

In their analysis, the researchers used data collected in two sample cities: New York and Dallas. The data were gathered from, among other sources, anonymized records collected via onboard devices in vehicles, and surveys that carefully sampled populations to cover variable travel behaviors. They showed the times of day cars are used and for how long, and how much time the vehicles spend at different kinds of locations — residential, workplace, shopping, entertainment and so on.

The findings, Trancik says, “round out the picture on the question of where to strategically locate chargers to support EV adoption and also support the power grid.”

Better availability of charging stations at workplaces, for example, could help to soak up peak power being produced at midday from solar power installations, which might otherwise go to waste because it is not economical to build enough battery or other storage capacity to save all of it for later in the day. Thus, workplace chargers can provide a double benefit, helping to reduce the evening peak load from EV charging and also making use of the solar electricity output.

These effects on the electric power system are considerable, especially if the system must meet charging demands for a fully electrified personal vehicle fleet alongside the peaks in other demand for electricity, for example on the hottest days of the year. If unmitigated, the evening peaks in EV charging demand could require installing upwards of 20 percent more power-generation capacity, the researchers say.

“Slow workplace charging can be more preferable than faster charging technologies for enabling a higher utilization of midday solar resources,” Wei says.

Meanwhile, with delayed home charging, each EV charger could be accompanied by a simple app to estimate the time to begin its charging cycle so that it charges just before it is needed the next day. Unlike other proposals that require a centralized control of the charging cycle, such a system needs no interdevice communication of information and can be preprogrammed — and can accomplish a major shift in the demand on the grid caused by increasing EV penetration. The reason it works so well, Trancik says, is because of the natural variability in driving behaviors across individuals in a population.

By “home charging,” the researchers aren’t only referring to charging equipment in individual garages or parking areas. They say it’s essential to make charging stations available in on-street parking locations and in apartment building parking areas as well.

Trancik says the findings highlight the value of combining the two measures — workplace charging and delayed home charging — to reduce peak electricity demand, store solar energy, and conveniently meet drivers' charging needs on all days. As the team showed in earlier research, home charging can be a particularly effective component of a strategic package of charging locations; workplace charging, they have found, is not a good substitute for home charging for meeting drivers’ needs on all days.

“Given that there's a lot of public money going into expanding charging infrastructure,” Trancik says, “how do you incentivize the location such that this is going to be efficiently and effectively integrated into the power grid without requiring a lot of additional capacity expansion?” This research offers some guidance to policymakers on where to focus rules and incentives.

“I think one of the fascinating things about these findings is that by being strategic you can avoid a lot of physical infrastructure that you would otherwise need,” she says. “Your electric vehicles can displace some of the need for stationary energy storage, and you can also avoid the need to expand the capacity of power plants, by thinking about the location of chargers as a tool for managing demands — where they occur and when they occur.”

Delayed home charging could make a surprising amount of difference, the team found. “It's basically incentivizing people to begin charging later. This can be something that is preprogrammed into your chargers. You incentivize people to delay the onset of charging by a bit, so that not everyone is charging at the same time, and that smooths out the peak.”

Such a program would require some advance commitment on the part of participants. “You would need to have enough people committing to this program in advance to avoid the investment in physical infrastructure,” Trancik says. “So, if you have enough people signing up, then you essentially don't have to build those extra power plants.”

It's not a given that all this would line up just right, and putting in place the right mix of incentives would be crucial. “If you want electric vehicles to act as an effective storage technology for solar energy, then the [EV] market needs to grow fast enough in order to be able to do that,” Trancik says.

To best use public funds to help make that happen, she says, “you can incentivize charging installations, which would go through ideally a competitive process — in the private sector, you would have companies bidding for different projects, but you can incentivize installing charging at workplaces, for example, to tap into both of these benefits.” Chargers people can access when they are parked near their residences are also important, Trancik adds, but for other reasons. Home charging is one of the ways to meet charging needs while avoiding inconvenient disruptions to people’s travel activities.

The study was supported by the European Regional Development Fund Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization, the Lisbon Portugal Regional Operation Program, and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

###

Written by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

---

JOURNAL

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101287 

ARTICLE TITLE

Strategies for beneficial electric vehicle charging to reduce peak electricity demand and store solar energy

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Mar-2023

Lasers and chemistry reveal how ancient pottery was made — and how an empire functioned

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FIELD MUSEUM

 

IMAGE: GRÁVALOS INSIDE AN ANCIENT RECUAY HOUSEHOLD AT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF JECOSH IN ANCASH, PERU. RECUAY WAS ONE OF THE LOCAL CULTURES WITH WHOM WARI INTERACTED DURING THEIR IMPERIAL EXPANSION. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: EMILY SHARP.

Peru’s first great empire, the Wari, stretched for more than a thousand miles over the Andes Mountains and along the coast from 600-1000 CE. The pottery they left behind gives archaeologists clues as to how the empire functioned. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers showed that rather than using “official” Wari pottery imported from the capital, potters across the empire were creating their own ceramics, decorated to emulate the traditional Wari style. To figure it out, the scientists analyzed the pottery’s chemical make-up, with help from laser beams.

“In this study, we looked at the idea of cosmopolitanism, of incorporating different cultures and practices into a society,” says M. Elizabeth Grávalos, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author. “We’re trying to show that potters were influenced by the Wari, but this influence was blended with their own local cultural practices.”

Grávalos says this model of cosmopolitanism is a little like trying to replicate a recipe from another culture, but with a local spin. “If you live in the US and you’re making pad thai at home, you might not have access to all the ingredients that someone living in Thailand would have, so you substitute some things,” she says. “Wari ceramics are a little like that — people throughout the empire were interested in Wari material culture, but they weren’t necessarily getting it directly from the Wari heartland. More often than not, we see local people trying to make their own version of Wari pottery.”

Grávalos and her colleagues led archaeological digs throughout Peru, working with local communities to excavate the thousand-year-old remains of households, tombs, and administrative centers, in search of Wari lifeways. The researchers were then granted permission from Peru’s Ministry of Culture to bring samples of ceramics from their excavations to Chicago for analysis.

Clay from different regions has a different chemical makeup, so studying the ceramics’ chemical makeup could tell the researchers if the pots were produced in different places or if they were all imported from the Wari capital.

“We’d take a tiny piece of a pot and used a laser to cut an even tinier piece, basically extracting a piece of the ceramic’s clay paste,” says Grávalos. “Then helium gas carried it to the mass spectrometer, which measures the elements present in the  clay paste.” (The lab set-up didn’t have open laser beams and floating shards of pottery cutting across the room, though — the whole process takes place on a microscopic scale inside a big boxy machine.)

The analysis showed that the pots excavated from distinct regions of Peru have different chemical signatures, and were therefore made with distinct clays. That helps show how the Wari culture spread.

Some empires, like the ancient Romans, took a “top-down” approach to spreading their aesthetic, shipping pottery across the Mediterranean so that people throughout the empire were using the official Roman style. Local potters emulating the traditional Wari style in their own work seems to hint at a more “bottom-up” approach.

“Of course, local people in all empires have some degree of agency and creative control — the only empire that’s truly top-down is the Borg from Star Trek,” says Patrick Ryan Williams, Curator of Archaeological Science and Director of the Elemental Analysis Facility  at the Field Museum and the study’s senior author. “Even the Romans had local people doing things their own way. But what we’re finding in this study is the agency of local peoples and the importance of local economies. In some regions, we find that Wari colonists had their own production centers and were recreating Wari lifeways locally. In other areas, we see that local communities made Wari pottery in their own way. I think that’s what’s really important about this study.”

The researchers say that the patterns revealed by this pottery could help explain why the Wari empire was able to thrive for so long. “Local production, even in a cosmopolitan society with lots of far-flung connections, makes a society more resilient,” says Williams. “If you’re entirely dependent on someone far away sending you things you need, you’re extremely vulnerable.”

Beyond the economic lessons that we might learn from the Wari, Grávalos says that the study matters because “this work challenges some of the assumptions we have about how societies work, particularly Indigenous groups who are often misrepresented or left out of broader narratives of world history. There are many people whose stories haven’t been told, and this study shows their resilience and their accomplishments.”

 

Example ceramic drinking cup from the Wari site of Cerro Baúl, Moquegua, Peru that are similar to the sherds included in the Laser Ablation sampling.

CREDIT

Courtesy Cerro Baúl Archaeological Project, photo by P. R. Williams, Catalog number CB-V001.

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Archaeological Science

ARTICLE TITLE

Crafting cosmopolitanism: Ceramic production and exchange during Wari imperialism (600-1000 CE)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Mar-2023

Neolithic ceramics reveal dairy processing from milk of multiple species

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

 

IMAGE: NEOLITHIC CERAMICS IDENTIFIED WITH HIGH CURD-CONTENT RESIDUES, INDICATING MULTIPLE DAIRY ANIMALS WERE USED. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF YORK

A new study has found evidence of cheesemaking, using milk from multiple animals in Late Neolithic Poland.

The research suggests that early farmers reduced the lactose content in milk by making it into cheese or other dairy products like yoghurt, and used dairy products from a number of different animals, such as cows, sheep or goats.

Lactose intolerance was a common condition in almost everyone in Europe during the Neolithic and until the Late Bronze Age when the genetic mutation became widespread, enabling adults to produce lactase, the enzyme which breaks down lactose in the body.

Researchers looked at the practice of dairy processing in the Late Neolithic, identifying high curd-content residues in pottery indicating cheesemaking, and revealing that multiple dairy species were utilised.

Dr Harry Robson, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “These results contribute significantly to our understanding of the use of dairy products by some of the earliest farmers of Central Europe. 

“Whilst previous research has shown that dairy products were widely available in some European regions during this period, here, for the first time, we have clear evidence for a diversified dairy herd, including cattle, sheep and goats, from the analysis of ceramics.”

The scientists and archaeologists from the Universities of York, Cambridge, Toruń and Kraków used a multi-stranded proteomic and lipid-analysis approach to investigate ceramics and deposits on their surface, from the site of Sławęcinek in central Poland.

The new development provides evidence that cheesemaking (and other curd-enriching dairy processing) can be directly detected by scrutinising the proportion of curd proteins, by comparing proteomic data. The results are also the first of their kind in Europe. 

Despite widespread lactose intolerance in the period, there is evidence of dairy being consumed during the Neolithic, such as animal bones with kill patterns expected for dairy herds, dairy lipids in ceramic vessels, and dairy proteins in ancient dental calculus or plaque. 

Lead author, Miranda Evans, PhD student at Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, said: “The proteomic results showed that the ancient residues closely resembled both the modern cheesemaking residues and cheese itself and not whole milk. This reveals that the people of Sławęcinek practised cheesemaking or another form of curd-enriching dairy processing.”

Evidence of multiple species used for cheesemaking was backed up by the presence of both cow and sheep or goat bones on the site.”

Dr Jasmine Lundy from the Department of Archaeology, said: “This study highlights how complementary lipid and proteomic analyses are, particularly in understanding the use of the ceramic vessel over time. From this, for example, we could see that not only did some techniques waterproof or seal the ceramics but also what foods were being produced in them.  

The study is published in the Royal Society Open Science

---

JOURNAL

Royal Society Open Science

Spain’s unions back government public pension reform

By JOSEPH WILSON

TODAY

 A couple walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, on Jan. 17, 2021. While France buckled under strikes against the raising of its retirement age from 62 to 64, all remained calm across the border in Spain Wednesday March 15, 2023 where its left-wing government won the backing of unions to reform the nation's public pension system. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s left-wing government won the backing of unions to reform the nation’s public pension system on Wednesday, in stark contrast with neighboring France, where plans to raise the retirement age have led to waves of strikes and mass protests.

The leaders of Spain’s two main labor unions, UGT and CC.OO., appeared alongside Minister of Social Security José Luis Escrivá in Madrid to christen the plan the union heads both deemed “historic.”

CC.OO. secretary general Unai Sordo said that the reform would be key to ensuring pensions for Spain’s retired population which he said is expected to increase from 10 to 15 million people by 2048.

“This is about maintaining a pillar of our social welfare system,” Sordo said.

It is very different across the border in France, where labor unions on Wednesday held another round of massive street protests against the push by President Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, a move that he says is necessary to sustain public pensions for the future.

Spain, whose workers already must stay on the job until at least age 65 years, won’t be asked to work longer. Instead, the new deal signed off on by its unions will aim to handle a looming boom in the number of retired workers by increasing the social security costs on businesses for higher-wage earners.

Spain has one of Europe’s fastest ageing populations and one of its highest rates of youth unemployment at around 30% — a cocktail that made tweaking its pension system a must.

A reform of Spain’s social security system was one of the requirements established by the European Union for Spain to continue receiving billions of euros from its post-pandemic recovery funds. Escrivá won approval from Brussels to go ahead with the plan last week.

“I want to congratulate the government and above all Minister Escrivá for their ability to negotiate with the European Union, because this is a deal that has Europe’s backing and that has enormous importance for our pensions,” said Pepe Álvarez, secretary general of UGT.

Spain’s leading business groups have criticized the plan, saying it will hurt hiring by increasing the burden on companies.

The plan will be given the go-ahead by Spain’s Cabinet on Thursday and then head to Parliament to become law. Its passing would be a much-needed boost for the coalition of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez ahead of local and regional elections in May and national elections in December, after recent spats between coalition members over the government’s sexual consent law.

Following the 2007-09 global recession that hit Spain hard, the government reformed public pensions so that workers could retire at age 65 if they had worked for 38.5 years. If not, they would have to wait until age 67.

Spain’s average yearly salary is around 28,000 euros ($29,500), just below the EU average and well below the French average of 40,000 euros ($42,000).

Bally Sports owner files for bankruptcy, MLB bolsters broadcast capabilities

By Alex Butler

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday that the league hired "seasoned" media profession to "bolster" broadcast capabilities amid Diamond Sports Group's financial struggles. 

File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

March 15 (UPI) -- Diamond Sports Group, which controls sports networks for 42 professional teams, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company announced. MLB said it expects the company to continue broadcasts, but cited contingency plans.

The Bally Sports owner, which is a subsidiary of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, announced the "voluntary" Chapter 11 filing Tuesday night. Diamond announced Feb. 15 that it missed a $140 million interest payment and had a 30-day grace period to resolve its debt, unless it chose to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Diamond, which made the filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, said it maintains more than $8 billion in current debt.

"Diamond intends to use the proceedings to restructure and strengthen its balance sheet, while continuing to broadcast quality live sports productions to fans across the nation," the company said. "DSG expects that its Bally Sports regional sports networks will continue to operate in the ordinary course during the Chapter 11 process.

RELATED MLB stars try to adapt to new rules, speedy play

"Diamond is well capitalized with approximately $425 million of cash on hand to fund its business and restructuring."

Diamond holds broadcast rights for 14 MLB teams. MLB holds digital broadcast rights for 14 of those teams. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who previously said the league could step in for coverage, reaffirmed that sentiment Tuesday night. He also called Diamond's filing "unfortunate."

"Despite Diamond's economic situation, there is every expectation that they will continue televising all games they are committed to during the bankruptcy process," Manfred said in a statement.

"MLB is ready to produce and distribute games in their local markets in the event that Diamond or any other regional sports network is unable to do so as required by their agreement with our clubs."

Manfred cited MLBTV and MLB Network and said the league has the capability to "deliver games to fans, uninterrupted."

"In addition, we have hired additional seasoned local media professionals to bolster our capabilities in anticipation of this development," Manfred said.

RELATEDBally Sports owner misses $140M payment, future in limbo

"Over the long term, we will reimagine our distribution model to address the changing media climate and ultimately reach an even larger number of fans."

Diamond said negotiations are underway for a restructuring agreement with debt holders. The company plans to separate from Sinclair as part of its agreement with creditors.

Report: Only six countries met 'healthy' air quality standards in 2022


Motorists drive with headlights on during daylight as streets are filled with smog Indian capital of New Delhi, India on Nov. 19, 2021. A new report ranked India as one of the worst countries for air pollution. File Photo by Abhishek/UPI | License Photo

March 14 (UPI) -- Just six countries had "healthy" air quality levels last year, as air pollution surged across the globe.

Only Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland and New Zealand, met the World Health Organization's air quality guidelines, according to IQAir, a company that tracks air quality.

Seven territories in the Pacific and Caribbean also met the threshold, which calls for an average air pollution level of 5 micrograms per cubic meter or less.

The study looked at fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which comes from fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires. It has been linked to a number of respiratory illnesses.

RELATED Gas stoves emit harmful pollutants, but experts urge considering risks in context

Chad topped the list of countries with the worst air pollution, registering a level of 89.7 micrograms per cubic meter.

"If you look at what's called satellite or modeled data, Africa is supposed to be probably the most polluted continent on the planet, but we don't have enough data," Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of IQAir North American, told CNN. "What that means is there's a whole lot more data that's needed in order for us to truly determine what are the most polluted countries and cities in the world."

Thirty-nine of the 50 cities with the worst air pollution were in India, which also ranked as one of the worst countries in overall pollution.

RELATED EPA proposes stronger air quality standards to fight pollution

Air pollution improved in the United States last year due to a mild wildfire season.

Columbus, Ohio; Atlanta and Chicago topped the list of major US cities with the worst air quality.

Hammes attributed the global rise in air pollution to the continued burning of fossil fuels.

RELATED Heat, air pollution a deadly mix for older adults, study shows

"This is literally about how we as a planet are continuing this unhealthy relationship with fossil fuels," said Hammes. "We are still dependent on fossil fuels and fossil fuels are responsible for the majority of air pollution that we encounter on this planet."

ANOTHER LEHMANN MOMENT

Credit Suisse stock triggers trading pause after Saudi bank cuts support


Axel P. Lehmann, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Credit Suisse, said at a panel session in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Wednesday that the bank was working on "de-risking" its balance sheet. 

Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA-EFE

March 15 (UPI) -- Swiss bank lender Credit Suisse's stock plummeted Wednesday, dragging down European markets after the chairman of the Saudi National Bank said publicly that it would not increase its support.

Shares of Credit Suisse fell more than 20%, triggering temporary halts in trading on bank stocks as the European Stoxx fell 2.6% amid the banking woes.

Shares of Societe Generale dropped 11.9%, BNP Paribas fell 10.7%, Commerzbank dipped 8.9% and Deutsche Bank declined 7.8% on Wednesday.

The Credit Suisse stock free-fall came after Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Wednesday that it could not increase its holding because of banking rules.

RELATEDSwiss lender Credit Suisse discovers flaw in financial reporting, stock hits new low

"The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory," Khudairy told Bloomberg. "We're not inclined to get into a new regulatory regime."

Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann said at a panel session in the Saudi capital of Riyadh that the bank was working on "de-risking" its balance sheet.

"We are regulated, we have strong capital ratios, very strong balance sheet," he said, according to CNBC. "We are all hands on deck."

Wednesday's decline came after Credit Suisse stock fell to an all-time low of $2.47 midday on Tuesday before closing down 1.18% at $2.51 as it described a "material weakness" in its financial reporting that could result in "misstatements of account balances or disclosures."

The bank made the statement in the release of its 2022 annual report.

The bank said that in late 2022 it saw "significantly higher withdrawals of cash deposits, non-renewal of maturing time deposits and net asset outflows at levels that substantially exceeded the rates incurred in the third quarter of 2022."
The news comes a day after Moody's Investors Service downgraded its rating of the American banking system as a whole, from stable to negative, citing the decline of the current banking environment after the failure of three banks.

The Federal Reserve Board is reviewing the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank after a run on deposits.

The U.S. Treasury Department has moved to ensure depositors will be able to access their money and President Joe Biden has sought to ensure Americans that "the banking system is safe."

Haunted by post-election riot, Brazil’s Lula reins in army

By MAURICIO SAVARESE and CARLA BRIDI

March 11, 2023

 Police stand on the other side of a window at Planalto Palace that was shattered by supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro, after they stormed the official workplace of the President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023. Sources in the army and defense ministry, told The Associated Press they don't see any evidence of another uprising against Lula’s government in the near term, adding the high command has performed its regular duties without question. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

SAO PAULO (AP) — When rioters stormed Brazil’s top government buildings in January to dispute the outcome of the presidential election, many soldiers stood by as far-right protesters broke windows, defecated in offices and destroyed valuable art.

The images from Brasilia that day still haunt the left-leaning government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He has strived ever since to ensure that military leaders defend South America’s largest democracy and stay out of politics.

The threat isn’t just hypothetical. Brazil has lived through four military coups – the most recent one in 1964, followed by two decades of brutal dictatorship.

Lula’s task is fraught. The military is filled with supporters of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, and its role in the new government is being diminished by the day.

Lula has already tapped more than 100 civilians to replace military officers Bolsonaro appointed to key positions, and he has moved oversight of the country’s intelligence agency to his chief of staff’s office, among other changes.

“Lula needed to manage his relationship with the military to be able to govern, and will continue to do so,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.

Melo said Brazil’s military has long believed that it has “some kind of guardianship of the country’s political process,” and Bolsonaro only fueled that belief.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, appointed more than 6,000 military officers to jobs across his government and revived an annual commemoration of the 1964 coup to stoke nostalgia for the days of military rule.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro attends a ceremony marking Army Day at Army headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, April 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

Although that era was marked by human rights abuses and the loss of civil liberties, Bolsonaro and many of his supporters remember it fondly as a time of strong nationalism, economic growth and conservative values. They view Lula’s efforts to tame the military as heavy-handed and misguided.

“Stop looking through the rearview mirror and govern for all Brazilians,” Bolsonaro’s former vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, who is now a senator, said in an interview.

The most significant move Lula has made so far has been to elevate Gen. Tomás Paiva to be the army’s top commander.

Paiva, 62, has pledged to keep soldiers out of politics and to respect the results of October’s election, in which Lula beat Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin.

Yet Paiva has also acknowledged that most the military’s leaders voted for Bolsonaro, and he lamented Lula’s victory to subordinates just three days before the new president called to offer him the promotion — comments he later said were misinterpreted.

Lula has taken various other steps aimed inoculating Brazil from the risk of another violent uprising with at least tacit support from some in the military:

— He blocked the appointment of a Bolsonaro loyalist to command the Goiania battalion, based an uncomfortably close 124 miles from the capital.

— He placed the country’s intelligence agency — formerly overseen by members of the military — under the office of his chief of staff, which is led by civilians.

— He took a symbolically important trip to the U.S., which before the election had warned Brazilian military leaders to steer clear of politics if they wanted access to arms purchases and cooperation from American armed forces.

For now, there is no evidence of another uprising being planned or of military leaders questioning Lula’s orders, according to a high-ranking official in the army and a person who works closely with the defense minister, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Lula enlisted the military’s cooperation twice in February: as part of a massive operation to expel some 20,000 illegal miners from the Yanomami Indigenous area in Brazil’s Amazon, and to help rescue people after mudslides near Sao Paulo.

These represented early tests of the relationship between Lula and the military, and the results were very positive, said political consultant Thomas Traumann. Still, there’s no guarantee of long-term stability, he said.

Rescue workers including military and volunteers carry the body of a victim near Barra do Sahi beach after a mudslide triggered by heavy rains in the coastal city of Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, Feb. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

It remains to be seen whether military retirees and active duty service members who either took part in the Jan. 8 riots or turned a blind eye to them will receive punishment. Some analysts believe that would be important to deter future action.

One video from Jan. 8 showed policemen at the presidential palace in the rare position of barking orders at soldiers: “Lead your troops!” one officer shouted at members of the presidential guard, which is part of the army.

Another video showed dozens of rioters surrounded by police in the palace, as a general attempts to free them. “Are you nuts?” a policeman asks. “They’re in custody!”

Supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro, sit in front of police inside the Planalto Palace after storming it, in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

Hundreds of civilians who participated in the riots have been jailed and dozens indicted. But service members have so far been spared. The military prosecutors’ office and the top military court have opened 17 investigations, although neither has been transparent about the process.

The incoming Chief Justice of Brazil’s Superior Military Court, Joseli Camelo, said he was encouraged recently when the army canceled a plan to commemorate the upcoming anniversary of the 1964 military coup, a dictatorship-era tradition that Bolsonaro revived.

“This is just another demonstration that the commander is aligned with all the powers towards our common challenge, which is to pacify Brazil and definitively reinforce democracy in our country,” Camelo said.

Mourão, Bolsonaro’s former vice president, says the military should not spare any of its members who are proven guilty of taking part in the riots. “The armed forces are shaped to be rigorous in the investigation of disciplinary errors and military crimes,” he said.


Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stand behind a banner that reads in Portuguese; "We, the people, elect the Armed Forces as a moderating power", in a protest against Bolsonaro's run-off election loss, outside Army headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, Nov. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

Even before taking office in January, Lula — who served as president from 2003-2010 — knew it was essential for him to bolster ties with the country’s right-leaning military.

Some highly regarded military leaders had openly derided him before the election, and some even campaigned to reelect Bolsonaro. For months, the army permitted anti-Lula protesters who were openly supportive of a military coup against him to camp outside their barracks.

In Lula’s first two presidential terms, his relationship with the military was marked by conciliation rather than confrontation, said Fabio Victor, a journalist who just published a best-selling book on Brazil’s armed forces and politics. But Jan. 8 appears to have altered his calculus.

In contrast with Bolsonaro’s administration, few members of the armed forces work at the presidential palace, Victor said. With an eye toward the future, Lula’s allies in Congress are pushing for constitutional changes that would more clearly define the military’s powers and limits, and his ministers are looking at overhauling military education.

“Lula today is very suspicious of the military,” Victor said.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks to reporters following his meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, Feb. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

___

Bridi reported from Brasilia.

AUSTRALIA
Gendered violence remains a ‘national crisis’, ABS data shows


For a quarter of Australian women who have experienced violence, it was from someone close to them. 

Photo: AAP

Tara Cosoleto6:30pm, Mar 15


One in five Australian women have been exposed to sexual violence in their lifetime but new data shows rates of harm inflicted by intimate partners are declining.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest personal safety report reveals 22 per cent of women have been exposed to sexual abuse, one in four of them at the hands of an intimate or family member.

But rates of intimate partner violence against women have dropped from 2.3 per cent in 2016 to 1.5 per cent in 2021-22.

Experts are cautious about the decline, noting the latest report might not reflect the changing forms of violence.

“It’s really important for the survey questions to evolve with perpetrator tactics to capture things like technology-facilitated abuse,” Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre director Kate Fitz-Gibbon told AAP.

“We also know that all forms of intimate partner violence are under-reported. The survey relies on self-reported victimisation data so that’s something to keep in mind.”

University of Melbourne’s Kristin Diemer, who was part of the ABS expert advisory panel, said the latest results might not show the full picture.

“We’re not dismissing the data that was collected during the (COVID-19) pandemic but different forms of survey methods were used,” she said.

“With further releases of the data, we should be able to look at particular acts of violence and see if they are different from what’s happened in the past.”

For the first time, the ABS looked at the prevalence of economic violence in cohabiting partner relationships.

About 16 per cent of women have experienced controlling behaviour around their finances, compared to 7.8 per cent of men.

“Economic abuse can be the most crippling in terms of a woman’s future after she leaves a relationship,” Professor Diemer said.

“She can have debts incurred that she has to pay off over 20 to 30 years. She may be bankrupt. She may have trouble getting a loan or a rental lease agreement all because of financial abuse.”

Our Watch chief executive Patty Kinnersly said economic violence became more prevalent during the pandemic lockdowns.

“We also heard about other ways where, mostly men, stopped women from using the car or accessing finances or took away their aids or their medication,” she said.

Men were more likely to experience physical violence than women (42 per cent compared to 31 per cent), while a stranger was often the perpetrator against men (30 per cent).

When it comes to sexual violence, 22 per cent of women experience it compared to 6.1 per cent of men.

“Violence is still disproportionately gendered,” Ms Kinnersly said.

“We need to remember these aren’t just stats. One woman is too many.”

The latest data shows gender-based violence is a “national crisis” that needs increased funding and attention, Professor Fitz-Gibbon said.

“We’ve seen the federal government in the last week asked significant questions about their commitment of over $300 billion to submarines.

“Less than one per cent of that has been committed to tackling violence against women.

“If we have a government that’s committed as they’ve said they are … then we need to see a significant increase in the funding commitment.”

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

Lifeline 13 11 14

-AAP