Samsung to invest $230 billion to build “mega” chip cluster

By KIM TONG-HYUNG

yesterday

The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. Samsung Electronics said Wednesday, March 15, 2023, it expects to invest 300 trillion won ($230 billion) over the next 20 years as part of an ambitious South Korean national project to build the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing base near the capital, Seoul. 

(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it expects to invest 300 trillion won ($230 billion) over the next 20 years as part of an ambitious South Korean national project to build the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing base near the capital, Seoul.

The chip-making “mega cluster,” which will be established in Gyeonggi Province by 2042, will be anchored by five new semiconductor plants built by Samsung. It will aim to attract 150 other companies producing materials and components or designing high-tech chips, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Samsung’s new plants will be located near its existing domestic factories and will produce both computer memory chips used for storing data and higher-margin logic chips designed to perform a broader range of functions, the company said.

A giant in the global memory business, Samsung is trying to expand its presence in advanced chips, anticipating that demand will soar in coming years with the adoption of new technologies such as 5G wireless networks, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.

The semiconductor cluster is part of broader government plans announced Wednesday to promote six key technology industries the country sees as most crucial for its export-dependent economy. Apart from semiconductors, they include rechargeable batteries, electric vehicles, robotics, displays and bio-technology. The government hopes to draw 550 trillion won ($422 million) in corporate investment on those projects through 2026.

South Korea’s plan comes as other technology powerhouses, including the United States, Japan and China, are building up their domestic chip manufacturing, deploying protectionist measures, tax cuts and sizeable subsidies to lure investments. In a meeting with economic policymakers and business leaders Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol described technology industries as the country’s “key economic growth engines and security and strategic assets that are also directly linked to job creation and livelihoods.”

“(South Korea) has world-class manufacturing capabilities and technologies in various high-tech industries such as semiconductors, secondary batteries, and displays, but (government) support and regulatory conditions have been insufficient,” the Trade Ministry said in a statement.

Samsung, South Korea’s biggest company, has seen its profit plummet in recent months as a weak global economy, rattled by Russia’s war on Ukraine and high inflation, depressed demand for its consumer electronics products and memory chips. The company’s profit for the three months through December fell near 70%, partially because chip prices fell sharply as clients adjusted their inventories to reflect economic uncertainties.

SK Hynix, another major South Korean chipmaker, reported an operating loss of 1.7 trillion won ($1.3 billion) for the October-December period, which marked its first quarterly deficit since 2012.

Bally Sports owner files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

By JOE REEDY

yesterday

 A member of the Houston Astros stands in the dugout in front of a Bally Sports sign before the team's spring training baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals on March 2, 2023, in Jupiter, Fla. Diamond Sports Group, the largest owner of regional sports networks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday, March 14. The move came after it missed a $140 million interest payment last month. Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)


Diamond Sports Group, the largest owner of regional sports networks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday. The move came after it missed a $140 million interest payment last month.

Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL.

The company said in a release Tuesday night that it expects to continue to operate during the bankruptcy process and that coverage of games should not be affected.

Diamond Sports also said it is negotiating a restructuring agreement with debt holders that will eliminate most of its debt. Under an agreement with creditors, it would become a separate company from Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“DSG will continue broadcasting games and connecting fans across the country with the sports and teams they love,” Diamond Sports CEO David Preschlack said in a statement. “We look forward to working constructively with our team and league partners and all DSG stakeholders throughout this process and beyond.”

Diamond said in a financial filing last fall it had debt of $8.67 billion. The bankruptcy filing was made in the Southern District of Texas.

Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.

Diamond has nearly $1 billion in rights payments, mostly to baseball teams, due in the first quarter this year. The company is current on payments to hockey and basketball teams, but it might withhold payments from some baseball teams where it is trying to renegotiate a better deal.

Major League Baseball has set up a local media department in case it has to take over broadcasts for teams. Games would air locally via MLB Network or streamed on MLB.TV in case that happened.

“Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy declaration today is an unfortunate development that we have been expecting. Despite Diamond’s economic situation, there is every expectation that they will continue televising all games they are committed to during the bankruptcy process,” MLB said in a statement late Tuesday night. “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 Sports isn’t the only company experiencing financial woes with its regional sports networks. Warner Bros. Discovery, which has an ownership stake in three of the AT&T SportsNet networks, has given the Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates until March 31 to reclaim their broadcast rights. WBD Sports is ending its investment in the networks.

 

Silicon Valley Bank’s demise disrupts the

disruptors in tech

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

March 14, 2023

Notices are posted at the entrance to a Silicon Valley Bank Private branch in San Francisco, Monday, March 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse rattled the technology industry that had been the bank’s backbone, leaving shell-shocked entrepreneurs thankful for the government reprieve that saved their money while they mourned the loss of a place that served as a chummy club of innovation.

“They were the gold standard, it almost seemed weird if you were in tech and didn’t have a Silicon Valley Bank account,” Stefan Kalb, CEO of Seattle startup Shelf Engine, said during a Monday interview as he started the process of transferring millions of dollars to other banks.

The Biden administration’s move guaranteeing all Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits above the insured limit of $250,000 per account resulted in a “palpable sigh of relief” in Israel, where its booming tech sector is “connected with an umbilical cord to Silicon Valley,” said Jon Medved, founder of the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.

But the gratitude for the deposit guarantees that will allow thousands of tech startups to continue to pay their workers and other bills was mixed with moments of reflection among entrepreneurs and venture capital partners rattled by Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall.

The crisis “has forced every company to reassess their banking arrangements and the companies that they work with,” said Rajeeb Dey, CEO of London-based startup Learnerbly, a platform for workplace learning.

Entrepreneurs who had deposited all their startups’ money in Silicon Valley Bank are now realizing it makes more sense to spread their funds across several institutions, with the biggest banks considered safer harbors.

Kalb started off Monday by opening an account at the largest bank in the U.S., JP Morgan Chase, which has about $2.4 trillion in deposits. That’s 13 times more than the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S.

Bank of America is getting some of the money that Electric Era had deposited at Silicon Valley Bank, and the Seattle startup’s CEO, Quincy Lee, expects having no difficulty finding other candidates to keep the rest of his company’s money as part of its diversification plan.

“Any bank is happy to take a startup’s money,” Lee said.

Even so, there are fears it will be more difficult to finance the inherently risky ideas underlying tech startups that became a specialty of Silicon Valley Bank since its founding over a poker game in 1983, just as the advent of the personal computer and faster microprocessors unleashed more innovation.

Silicon Valley quickly established itself as the “go-to” spot for venture capitalists looking for financial partners more open to unconventional business proposals than its bigger, more established peers who still didn’t have a good grasp of technology.

“They understood startups, they understood venture capital,” said Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, commercializing a process to make low-carbon cement. “They were woven into the fabric of the startup community that I’m part of, so banking with SVB was a no brainer.”

Venture capitalists set up their accounts at Silicon Valley Bank just as the tech industry started its boom and then advised the entrepreneurs that they funded to do the same.

That cozy relationship came to an end when the bank disclosed a $1.8 billion loss on low-yielding bonds that were purchased before interest rates began to spike last year, raising alarms among its financially savvy customer base who used the fruits of technology to spread warnings that turned into a calamitous run on deposits.

Bob Ackerman, founder and managing director of venture funder AllegisCyber Capital, likened last week’s flood of withdrawal demands from Silicon Valley Bank to a self-inflicted wound by “a circular firing squad” intent on “shooting your best friend.”

Many of Silicon Valley Bank’s roughly 8,500 employees now find themselves hanging in limbo, too, even though government regulators now overseeing the operations have told them they will be offered jobs at 1.5 times their salaries for 45 days, said Rob McMillan, who had worked there for 32 years.

“We don’t know who’s going to pay us when,” McMillan said. “I think we all missed a paycheck. We don’t know if we have benefits.”

Even though all of Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors are being made whole, its demise is expected to leave a void in the technology sector that may be difficult to fill. In an essay that he posted on his LinkedIn page, prominent venture capitalist Michael Moritz compared Silicon Valley Bank to a “cherished local market where people behind the counters know the names of their customers, have a ready smile but still charge the going price when they sell a cut of meat.”

Silicon Valley Bank is fading away at a time when startups were already having a tougher go at raising money, with a downturn in technology stock values and a steady rise in interest rates causing venture capitalists to retrench. The bank often helped fill the financial gaps with one of its specialties — loans known as “venture debt” because it was woven into the funding provided by its venture capitalist customers.

“There’s going to be a lot of great ideas, a lot of great teams that don’t get funding because the barriers to entry are too high or because there are not enough people who are willing to invest,” said William Lin, an investor in the cybersecurity startup Symmetry Systems and a venture partner at ForgePoint, a venture capital firm.

With Silicon Valley Bank gone and venture capitalists pulling in their reins, Lin expects there will be fewer startups getting money to pursue ideas in the same fields of technology. If that happens, he foresees a winnowing of competition that will eventually make the biggest tech companies even stronger than they already are.

“There’s a real day of reckoning coming in the startup world,” predicted Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable.

That may be true, but entrepreneurs like Lee and Kalb already feel like they had been through an emotional wringer after spending the weekend worrying that all their hard work would go down a drain if they couldn’t get their money out of Silicon Valley Bank.

“It was like being stuck inside a doomsday loop,” Lee said.

Even as he focuses on growing Shelf Engine’s business of helping grocers managing their food orders, he vowed not to forget “a very hard lesson.”

“I obviously now know banks aren’t as safe as I used to think they were,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Ami Bentov in Tel Aviv; Kelvin Chan in London; Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island; Frank Bajak in Boston and Cathy Bussewitz and Cora Lewis in New York contributed to this story.

___

Fed criticized for missing red flags before bank collapse

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and FATIMA HUSSEIN

March 14, 2023

A pedestrian passes a Silicon Valley Bank branch in San Francisco, Monday, March 13, 2023. As the primary regulator of the bank, the Federal Reserve is coming under sharp criticism from financial watchdogs and banking experts. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is facing stinging criticism for missing what observers say were clear signs that Silicon Valley Bank was at high risk of collapsing into the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Critics point to many red flags surrounding the bank, including its rapid growth since the pandemic, its unusually high level of uninsured deposits and its many investments in long-term government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which tumbled in value as interest rates rose.

“It’s inexplicable how the Federal Reserve supervisors could not see this clear threat to the safety and soundness of banks and to financial stability,” said Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, an advocacy group.

Wall Street traders and industry analysts “have been publicly screaming about these very issues for many, many months going back to last fall,” Kelleher added.

The Fed was the primary federal supervisor of the bank based in Santa Clara, California, that failed last week. The bank was also overseen by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

Now the consequences of the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, along with New York-based Signature Bank, which failed over the weekend, are complicating the Fed’s upcoming decisions about how high to raise its benchmark interest rate in the fight against chronically high inflation.

Many economists say the central bank would likely have raised rates by an aggressive half-point next week at its meeting, which would amount to a step up in its inflation fight, after the Fed implemented a quarter-point hike in February. Its rate currently stands at about 4.6%, the highest level in 15 years.

Last week, many economists suggested that Fed policymakers would raise their projection for future rates next week to 5.6%. Now it’s suddenly unclear how many additional rate increases the Fed will forecast.

With the collapse of the two large banks fueling anxiety about other regional banks, the Fed may focus more on boosting confidence in the financial system than on its long-term drive to tame inflation.

The latest government report on inflation, released Tuesday, shows that price increases remain far higher than the Fed prefers, putting Chair Jerome Powell in a tougher spot. Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs and are seen as a better gauge of longer-run inflation, jumped 0.5% from January to February — the most since September. That is far higher than is consistent with the Fed’s 2% annual target.

“Absent the fallout from the bank failure, it may have been a close call, but I think it would have tipped them towards a half-point (rate hike) at this meeting,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide.

On Monday, Powell announced that the Fed would review its supervision of Silicon Valley to understand how it might have better managed its regulation of the bank. The review will be conducted by Michael Barr, the Fed vice chair who oversees bank oversight, and will be publicly released May 1.

A Federal Reserve spokesperson declined to comment further.

Elizabeth Smith, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, said, “We are actively investigating the situation and conducting a thorough review to ensure the Department is doing everything we can to protect Californians.”

By all accounts, Silicon Valley was an unusual bank. Its management took excessive risks by buying billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds when interest rates were low. As the Fed continually raised interest rates to fight inflation, leading to higher rates on Treasurys, the value of Silicon Valley Bank’s bonds steadily lost value.

Most banks would have sought to make other investments to offset that risk. The Fed could have also forced the bank to raise additional capital.

The bank had grown rapidly. Its assets quadrupled in five years to $209 billion, making it the 16th-largest bank in the country. And roughly 94% of its deposits were uninsured because they exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s $250,000 insurance cap.

That percentage was the second highest among banks with more than $50 billion in assets, according to ratings agency S&P. Signature had the fourth-highest percentage of uninsured deposits.

Such an unusually high proportion made Silicon Valley Bank highly susceptible to the risk that depositors would quickly withdraw their money at the first sign of trouble — a classic bank run — which is exactly what happened.

“I’m at a loss for words to understand how this business model was deemed acceptable by their regulators,” said Aaron Klein, a former congressional aide, now at the Brookings Institution, who worked on the Dodd-Frank banking regulation law that was passed after the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank failures will likely color an upcoming Fed review of rules that set out how much money large banks must hold in reserve. Barr said last year that he wanted to conduct a “holistic” review of those requirements, raising concerns in the banking industry that the review would lead to rules forcing banks to hold more reserves, which would limit their ability to lend.

Many critics also point to a 2018 law as softening bank regulations in ways that contributed to Silicon Valley’s failure. Pushed by the Trump administration with bipartisan support in Congress, the law exempted banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets — Silicon Valley’s size — from requirements that included regular examinations of how they would fare in tough economic times, known as “stress tests.”

Silicon Valley’s CEO, Greg Becker, had lobbied Congress in support of the rollback in regulations, and he served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco until the day of the collapse.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, asked him him about his lobbying in a letter released Tuesday.

“These rules were designed to safeguard our banking system and economy from the negligence of bank executives like yourself — and their rollback, along with atrocious risk management policies at your bank, have been implicated as chief causes of its failure,” Warren’s letter said.

The 2018 law also provided the Fed with more discretion in its bank oversight. The central bank subsequently voted to further reduce regulation for banks the size of Silicon Valley.

In October 2019, the Fed voted to effectively reduce the capital those banks had to hold in reserve.

Kelleher said the Fed still could have pushed Silicon Valley Bank to take steps to protect itself.

“Nothing in that law prevented in any way the Federal Reserve supervisors from doing their job,” Kelleher said.

___

AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

Saudi Arabia’s golf case threatens to spill kingdom secrets

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

March 12, 2023

 Former President Donald Trump, left, talks with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, center, and Majed Al-Sorour, CEO of Golf Saudi, on the 16th hole during the first round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, NJ., July 29, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Officials who oversee Saudi Arabia’s tens of billions of dollars in U.S. investments haven’t been shy about flaunting their ties with top American business and political figures, down to wearing MAGA caps as they swing golf clubs alongside former President Donald Trump. But they’ve been silent about many of the details of these relationships.

That’s changing as a result of a federal lawsuit in California pitting the Saudi-owned golf tour upstart LIV against the PGA Tour. A judge, citing what she described as the kingdom’s hands-on management of LIV, found that when it came to the new golf league, Saudi officials and the Saudi government aren’t shielded from U.S. courts the way sovereign nations usually are.

While Saudi Arabia is fighting the decision, insisting U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over its high officials, the ruling means lawyers for the PGA Tour would be able to question top officials about business secrets that the Saudis have held close, such as details of deal-making involving 2024 presidential candidate Trump and others.

U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman found that the Saudis had smacked up against a commercial exception to U.S. laws on sovereign immunity.

Yasir al Rumayyan, appointed under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to manage the oil-rich Saudi government’s $600 billion-plus stockpile of wealth, is “up to his eyeballs” in managing the golf tour, Labson Freeman declared.

The finding follows PGA Tour claims that al Rumayyan himself recruited LIV players, approved LIV contracts and was otherwise the golf league’s decision-maker and manager. Lawyers for Saudi Arabia counter that Rumayyan’s actions were those of an eager investor, not of someone actually running a business.

The case matters beyond the world of golf. Saudi Arabia has been assertive in U.S. business investments and political relationships and could now face court demands for greater transparency and accountability.

The insistence by Saudi officials that U.S. courts have little or no say over their actions is especially sensitive. Last year, the kingdom, with legal backing from the Biden administration, successfully argued that American courts had no authority to try the prince in a lawsuit over the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that aides and other Saudi officials sent by the prince killed Khashoggi. The slaying has opened a lasting rift between the Biden administration and Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

Longstanding international law generally protects the leaders and government of one country from being hauled into another country’s courts. Congress carved out commercial activity as an exception to that sovereign immunity in 1976.

-The PGA Tour argued in a filing Friday that Saudi Arabia and its sovereign wealth fund under the prince have a record of flip-flopping on insisting upon sovereign immunity, depending on whether doing so works to their advantage in various business deals and lawsuits.

Saudi Arabia’s critics and independent legal experts and analysts say the kingdom may be in a tough spot legally.

“It seemed to me very clear that it wasn’t immune” from U.S. courts when it came to operating the LIV golf tour and tournaments, said Donald Baker, a lawyer and a former head in the Justice Department’s antitrust division who is not involved in the case.

Baker projected the case could lead to California’s Northern District federal court seeking depositions from Saudi royals. Any decisions on whether other Saudi government business deals in the United States have similarly lost their immunity from U.S. courts would have to be made on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Sarah Leah Whitson, who runs the Democracy for the Arab World Now rights group founded by Khashoggi, said that “if they want to have sovereign immunity from their business transactions, it means they can sue people, they can demand that the judicial system enforces contracts and the laws governing contracts, but nobody can impose that against them. Nobody can hold them accountable.”

The Saudi-funded professional golf tour, now in its second season and with a slogan of “Golf, but louder,” is known for its blaring music, record multimillion-dollar purses, ties with Trump and unfriendly rivalry with the PGA Tour. Trump courses this year will host three LIV tournaments, in deals whose financial terms have not been publicly disclosed.

Saudi Arabia’s immunity problem comes in an antitrust lawsuit that was initially brought by LIV players against the long-established PGA Tour. The case already has revealed that the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund owns 93% of LIV.

A lawyer for Saudi Arabia’s side of the case did not respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment. A LIV spokeswoman referred questions to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which also did not respond to requests for comment.

Under the now eight-year rule of Saudi Arabia’s king, Salman, his son Prince Mohammed has made the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund a primary tool of Saudi investment at home and abroad. The prince is the fund’s chairman. Saudi officials say the aim is to diversify the kingdom’s oil-funded economy.

Under Prince Mohammed and fund governor al Rumayyan, the fund has more than $30 billion invested in Uber, Meta, luxury electric car brand and Tesla rival Lucid, Paypal, Costco and other publicly traded U.S. businesses.

The fund also has consolidated Saudis’ relationship with the Trump family, using Trump golf courses and directing $2 billion to the investment firm of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Rumayyan sits on the board of Uber. He plays golf with Trump. He triggered one of Elon Musk’s biggest tweet storms and legal cases, when Musk tweeted about what he later testified was the prospect of a Saudi sovereign wealth fund deal to take Tesla private.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund also is spending heavily on sports. In addition to creating the LIV golf tour, the Saudis have bought the Newcastle United soccer team in Britain’s Premier League and hosted Formula One races, horse races with record prize money, and other tournaments and matches, from snooker to boxing and chess.

Saudi Arabia is presenting itself as an energetic, youthful and business-friendly government. Human rights groups counter with the word “sportswashing,” saying the kingdom under Prince Mohammed’s influence is trying to distance itself from the killing of Khashoggi, the jailing of other rights advocates, and a failed war in Yemen. U.S. critics paint Saudi Arabia’s financial deals with Trump and Kushner as the oil kingdom backing one side in America’s highly partisan politics.

“They’re really trying to rebrand the kingdom ... using sport to reach a much wider public audience and trying to tap into some of the passion that people have,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute in Houston.

To close the deal buying Newcastle United, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund provided what authorities said were “legally binding assurances” that the kingdom would not be involved in running the team, even though Rumayyan serves as team chairman. Rights advocates argued unsuccessfully for a reexamination of that deal in light of the rulings of the California federal court.

Critics — and the PGA Tour lawyers in Friday’s filing — also contend Saudi Arabia willingly waived sovereign immunity when it submitted government documents in another U.S. case, against a Saudi who had served as a top intelligence official under the previous king. The United States intervened to quash the case on the grounds it threatened to reveal national security secrets.

In the golf lawsuit, LIV players and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, formally called the Public Investment Fund, argue that unfair practices by the PGA are harming LIV. PGA lawyers respond in filings that it’s the reputations of Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed that are scaring away business.

___

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.

Ellen Knickmeyer
Foreign policy, national security, foreign policy & climate

EllenKnickmeyer

THE FIRST MASONS
Like it or not, building in Italy means mastering concrete

By CAIN BURDEAU

This image provided by Audrey Rodeman shows Cain Burdeau covering a wall of a small concrete house where he lives with his family outside Castelbuono, Sicily, Italy, in a coat of concrete plaster. Burdeau had to become familiar with masonry to build in Italy, a land where laborers have long excelled with trowels, chisels, mortar mixes, stones and bricks. (Audrey Rodeman via AP)

CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily (AP) — Everywhere you look in Italy, it’s there: It can be hulking and gray but also colorful and fun. Ominous but also beautiful.

Masonry using concrete and its old ingredient, cement, are inescapable here. It’s a crucial difference between construction in North America and in Europe: the carpenter versus the stone worker.

That was the difficult reality I faced when I moved from the U.S. with my family into a long-abandoned farm property 3 kilometers (a couple of miles) outside a town called Castelbuono in the Madonie Mountains in north-central Sicily.

I had a whole bunch of ugly and crumbling concrete to deal with. Or that’s how I saw it at first.

Coming from a background in American carpentry, the art of masonry was entirely new to me. But here, in a land where laborers have long excelled with trowels, chisels, mortar mixes, stones and bricks, I realized I’d have to become familiar with them too.

Masonry is especially legendary in Italy, home to many of the world’s most spectacular examples of stone and mortar work. The country also boasts the largest un-reinforced concrete dome still in existence: the Pantheon of ancient Rome.

As I began experimenting with concrete work and got a little better at it, I also came to appreciate more all those concrete buildings around me in Sicily — from the ancient beauties to the clunkier, Brutalist-style versions that went up in a post-World War II building boom.

The farm’s main part consists of two barns: an old stone structure, and a newer, tower-like one made of concrete blocks. Nearly five years went by before I finally attempted to turn the barns into a house.

During those years, my family had been living comfortably in a tiny modern home, also built in concrete blocks, a few yards from the barns where the farmer who built this place kept animals and tools, and made wine and olive oil. The 430-square-foot home – with a flushing toilet, lights, shower, windows, veranda and tiled floors – was the reason we’d bought the property.

The hulking barns, though, remained always at the back of my mind, holding the potential to be transformed into a bigger, more beautiful house.

Finally, one day I picked up a borrowed, hand-held jackhammer and started busting into the work.

My first objective was to remove a concrete-and-stone bench sitting against a sagging wall of the old barn. After a few weeks of work, I’d burnt through my friend’s jackhammer and a cheap new one.

It was hard going. Hand chisels were more apt to bounce off than accomplish any demolition. Normal drills were absolutely useless. The hours accumulated, along with a pile of busted concrete bits, stones of many sizes, lots of sand and cement, steel rods, broken bricks, pebbles.

My back was sore. I was exasperated. I looked up and sighed at the thought of what still awaited:

One side of the two-story barn was bereft of even a coat of plaster, and bats flew in and out of its gaping cracks. A big concrete trough was pulling away from the wall of the main barn. Inside the barns, the walls had no electrical outlets. Water lines and windows were scarce. The floors needed to be layered in new concrete.

And maybe worst of all, concrete beams throughout the structure were showing cracks.

Overwhelmed, I went back to jackhammering, chiseling, cutting steel re-bar, piling up rubble, cutting electrical lines into the concrete walls and, eventually, even beginning to plaster.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, I suppose,” I bolstered myself.

In town, a friend and marble worker tried to teach me the mysteries of Italian construction, running his hand over a massive stone and mortar edifice.

“Look at this ancient place’s walls; look at how thick these walls are,” said Antonio Capuana, admiration in his voice. “These are load-bearing walls that keep up the entire house. This wall was part of a barn for an old monastery.”

Back then, he said, cement didn’t exist. The builders used stone and cocciopesto — a clay mixed with lime — to make huge structures.

This image provided by Cain Burdeau shows a construction worker mixing concrete on a street in Castelbuono, Sicily, Italy. In Italy, masonry using concrete is an inescapable aspect of construction and a crucial difference between home building in North America and in Europe. (Cain Burdeau via AP)

Widespread use of modern concrete and cement arrived in Sicily in the early 1900s and boomed after World War II, as it did in much of the world.

“Cement changed the world,” Nicolo Pierlucio Raimondo, an architect in Castelbuono, told me.

The art of mortar-making goes back to the ancient Romans and Arabs, he said. They experimented with the binding qualities of pozzolans, naturally occurring cements such as volcanic ash and gypsum. The invention of Portland cement in the 1820s, and its mass adoption in the early 1900s, was another game changer.

“Think about how much bigger cities have gotten in these last 100 years. Cement had a big part in this,” the architect said. “It helped speed up construction.”

But he added a cautionary note: “How long will these concrete structures last? No one knows.”

Capuana, the marble worker, pointed across the street to a row of concrete homes built in the 1960s and ’70s.

“Look at the overhangs on all those buildings,” he said. “They were made with steel and concrete. Over time, we’ve had to rebuild them all.”

By contrast, experts are still trying to understand the secret to the longevity of the ancient Romans’ concrete.

Modern concrete’s biggest weakness is water seeping through its tiny pores, a major factor in hairline cracks. Once water penetrates and rusts the steel used to reinforce concrete, a cracking process known as spalling worsens.

Gioacchino Allegra, a master builder overseeing the remodeling of a concrete home on the outskirts of Castelbuono, said today’s concrete is more compact than that of the building boom of the 1960s, which reduces spalling.

I also reached out to the International Masonry Institute for guidance.

Amy Lamb Woods, a concrete expert and preservationist there, said the post-World War II boom in concrete construction — the Brutalist stuff — was made possible by the advent of better kilns in the early 1900s.

On the down side, concrete became associated with urban decay. On the plus side, its use helped create so much modern infrastructure, from highways to hospitals.

“There’s this onslaught of: ‘Oh, it’s concrete, it’s ugly,’ and they want to tear them down,” Woods said. “All of us preservation people are advocating for their preservation because we believe these buildings are iconic, breathtaking, especially when they’re maintained well.”

In the U.S., that debate has intensified because concrete structures older than 50 years are now eligible for landmark status.

Also, because concrete is now recognized as causing some 8 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, most of that from cooking that cement in those kilns.

Yet as Woods noted, “The most green building you can build is the one that you restore and preserve. You’re in essence keeping the building. And so, you’re not putting it into a landfill, and you’re continuing its use.”

Listening to her made me feel so much better about the potential in my towering and downright ugly concrete barn, and about all the concrete work waiting to be done.

——

The ancient lowly; a history of the ancient working people from the earliest known period to the adoption of Christianity by Constantine

by Ward, C. Osborne (Cyrenus Osborne)

Publication date 1888

PDF 

VOL 1

https://archive.org/details/ancientlowlyahi03wardgoog/page/n6/mode/2up

VOL2

https://archive.org/details/ahistoryancient00wardgoog/page/n7/mode/2up

Experts say attacks on free speech are rising across the US

By REBECCA BOONE

1 of 5
A content disclaimer sits at the entrance to the Unconditional Care exhibit Monday, March 6, 2023, at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History in Lewiston, Idaho. Artists said some of their works weren't allowed in the exhibit by LCSC, which cited Idaho's No Public Funds for Abortion for removing some of the pieces. In Idaho, an art exhibit was censored and teens were told they couldn't testify in some legislative hearings. In Washington, a lawmaker proposed a hotline for reporting people who make offensively biased statements. In Florida, bloggers are fighting a bill that would force them to register with the state if they write posts criticizing public officials.

 (August Frank/Lewiston Tribune via AP, File)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In Idaho, an art exhibit was censored and teens were told they couldn’t testify in some legislative hearings. In Washington state, a lawmaker proposed a hotline so the government could track offensively biased statements, as well as hate crimes. In Florida, bloggers are fighting a bill that would force them to register with the state if they write posts criticizing public officials.

Meanwhile, bans on books and drag performances are growing increasingly common nationwide.

“We are seeing tremendous attacks on First Amendment freedoms across the country right now, at all levels of government. Censorship is proliferating, and it’s deeply troubling,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“This year, we’re seeing a wave of bills targeting drag performances, where simply being gender nonconforming is enough to trigger the penalty. We’re also seeing a wave of bills regulating what can be in public or K-12 school libraries,” Cohn said. “On college campuses, we have been tracking data about attempts to get faculty members punished or even fired for speech or expression and the numbers are startling — it’s the highest rate that we’ve seen in our 20 years of existence.”

First Amendment rights had been stable in America for decades, said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, but in recent years many states have reverted to the anti-speech tactics employed by people like Sen. Joe McCarthy during the “Red Scare” of the early 1950s.

McCarthy and others tried to silence political opponents by accusing them of being communists or socialists, using fear and public accusations to suppress basic free speech rights. The term “McCarthyism” became synonymous with baseless attacks on free expression, and the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to the phenomena in several First Amendment-related rulings.

“We are seeing a concerted wave that we have not seen in decades,” said Paulson, highlighting states like Florida where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed for legislation that would criminalize drag shows, limit what pronouns teachers can use for students, allow parents to determine what books can be in libraries and block some history classes entirely.

“It’s pretty mind-boggling that so many politicians are waving the flag of freedom while doing anything they possibly can to infringe on the free speech rights of Americans,” Paulson said.

Still, no one political group has a monopoly on censorship — aggression is increasing across the spectrum, Cohn said.

Washington state’s bias hotline bill, which died in committee earlier this year, was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Javier Valdez and backed by several groups including the Anti-Defamation League, Urban League, Council on American-Islamic Relations and others. It aimed to help the state collect information about hate crimes and bias incidents and to provide support and compensation to victims at a time when hate crime reports are rising.

Opponents, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said they feared it would chill protected speech because it encompasses both criminal behavior and offensively biased statements.

Hate speech can be damaging and repugnant, but is still generally protected by the First Amendment. The Department of Homeland Security and experts who study extremism have warned that hateful rhetoric can be seen as a call to action by extremists groups.

Oregon created a similar bias hotline in 2019. It received nearly 1,700 calls in 2021, with nearly 60% of the reported incidents falling short of criminal standards, according to an annual report from Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s office.

“People in power target their political adversaries, so who is being silenced really depends on where you are on the map and its individual context,” Cohn said.

Artist Katrina Majkut experienced that first-hand last week, when artworks she had shown in more than two dozen states over the past decade were unexpectedly censored at a small state school in Lewiston, Idaho.

Majkut uses embroidery to highlight and subvert historically narrow ideas of wifedom and motherhood. She was hired to curate an exhibit at Lewis-Clark State College focusing on health care issues like chronic illness, pregnancy and gun violence.

But March 2, a day before the show’s opening, Majkut and two other artists were told some of their work would be removed over administrator fears about running afoul of Idaho’s “No Public Funds for Abortion Act.”

The 2021 law bars state-funded entities from promoting abortion or taking other measures that could be seen as training or counseling someone in favor of abortion.

Majkut’s cross-stitch depicting misoprostol and mifepristone tablets — which can be used together to induce abortion early in pregnancy — was removed from the exhibit along with a wall plaque detailing Idaho’s abortion laws.

Four documentary video and audio works by artist Lydia Nobles that showed women talking about their own experiences with abortion were also removed. And part of artist Michelle Harney’s series of 1920s-era letters written to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger were stricken from the show.

“To be censored like that is shocking and surreal,” said Majkut, who designs her art to be educational rather than confrontational. “If the most even-keeled, bipartisan artwork around this topic is censored, then everything is going to be censored.”

Logan Fowler, the spokesman for LCSC, said the school made the decision after consulting with attorneys about whether showing the art could violate the law. Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug, the author of the law, said Tuesday that it was not intended to “prevent open discussion” of abortion — only to prevent tax dollars from being used to promote it.

The art exhibit censorship comes just two months after another controversial decision by Skaug. As chairman of the Idaho House Judiciary and Rules Committee, Skaug announced in January that people under age 18 would not be allowed to testify in his committee. Another Republican committee chair soon followed suit.

Lawmakers have the ability to limit committee testimony, and often use those limits to keep the legislature’s work focused and timely. Still, the age-based speech restriction appeared to be a first for the state.

A group of teens took action, launching phone and email campaigns staging protests.

“There is a clear lack of foresight in politicians who seek to eliminate the voices of those who will one day elect and eventually supersede them,” a group of 32 high school student leaders wrote in a joint opinion piece sent to news outlets across the state. “We ask Idaho’s Republican leaders, what are you so afraid of?”

The lawmakers eventually modified their rules, allowing youth to testify as long as they have signed permission slips from a parent or guardian.

Skaug said the rule was necessary to ensure parents are aware if their kids are leaving school to testify at the Statehouse. He still intends to give priority to older residents when testimony time is limited, but said he’s not aware of any youth actually being denied the chance to testify so far this year.

For Cohn, the efforts in Idaho and elsewhere reflect the danger of trying to restrict the expression of people who hold opposing views.

“We have to be ever-vigilant if we want our culture of individual freedoms to prevail,” he said. “Bad ideas are better dealt with through debate and dialogue than government censorship.”

SO MUCH FOR PARENTS RIGHTS

Texas announces takeover of Houston schools, stirring anger

By JUAN A. LOZANO and PAUL J. WEBER

yesterday

People hold up signs at a news conference, Friday, March 3, 2023, in Houston while protesting the proposed takeover of the city's school district by the Texas Education Agency. Texas officials on Wednesday, March 15, announced a state takeover of Houston's nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political. 

(AP Photo/Juan A. Lozano)

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political.

The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner, Mike Morath, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S. It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas’ largest city, where Democrats wield control, and state Republican leaders, who have sought increased authority following election fumbles and COVID-19 restrictions.

The takeover is the latest example of Republican and predominately white state officials pushing to take control of actions in heavily minority and Democratic-led cities. They include St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi, where the Legislature is pushing to take over the water system and for an expanded role for state police and appointed judges.

In a letter to the Houston Independent School District, Morath said the Texas Education Agency will replace Superintendent Millard House II and the district’s elected board of trustees with a new superintendent and an appointed board of managers made of residents from within the district’s boundaries.

Morath said the board has failed to improve student outcomes while conducting “chaotic board meetings marred by infighting” and violating open meetings act and procurement laws. He accused the district of failing to provide proper special education services and of violating state and federal laws with its approach to supporting students with disabilities.

He cited the seven-year record of poor academic performance at one of the district’s roughly 50 high schools, Wheatley High, as well as the poor performance of several other campuses.

“The governing body of a school system bears ultimate responsibility for the outcomes of all students. While the current Board of Trustees has made progress, systemic problems in Houston ISD continue to impact district students,” Morath wrote in his six-page letter.

Most of Houston’s school board members have been replaced since the state began making moves toward a takeover in 2019. House became superintendent in 2021.

He and the current school board will remain until the new board of managers is chosen sometime after June 1. The new board of managers will be appointed for at least two years.

House in a statement pointed to strides made across the district, saying the announcement “does not discount the gains we have made.”

He said his focus now will be on ensuring “a smooth transition without disruption to our core mission of providing an exceptional educational experience for all students.”

The Texas State Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas condemned the takeover. At a news conference in Austin, state Democratic leaders called for the Legislature to increase funding for education and raise teacher pay.

“We acknowledge that there’s been underperformance in the past, mainly due to that severe underfunding in our public schools,” state Rep. Armando Walle, who represents parts of north Houston, said.

An annual Census Bureau survey of public school funding showed Texas spent $10,342 per pupil in the 2020 fiscal year, more than $3,000 less than the national average, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston.

The state was able to take over the district under a change in state law that Houston Democratic state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. proposed in 2015. In an op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle on Monday, Dutton said he has no regrets about what he did.

“We’re hearing voices of opposition, people who say that HISD shouldn’t have to face consequences for allowing a campus to fail for more than five consecutive years. Those critics’ concern is misplaced,” Dutton wrote.

Schools in other big cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans and Detroit, in recent decades have gone through state takeovers, which are generally viewed as last resorts for underperforming schools and are often met with community backlash. Critics argue that state interventions generally have not led to big improvements.

Texas started moving to take over the district following allegations of misconduct by school trustees, including inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts, and chronically low academic scores at Wheatley High.

The district sued to block a takeover, but new education laws subsequently passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and a January ruling from the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to seize control.

“All of us Texans have an obligation and should come together to reinvent HISD in a way that will ensure that we’re going to be providing the best quality education for those kids,” Abbott said Wednesday.

Schools in Houston are not under mayoral control, unlike in New York and Chicago, but as expectations of a takeover mounted, the city’s Democratic leaders unified in opposition.

Race is also an issue because the overwhelming majority of students in Houston schools are Hispanic or Black. Domingo Morel, a professor of political science and public services at New York University, said the political and racial dynamics in the Houston case are similar to instances where states have intervened elsewhere.

“If we just focus on taking over school districts because they underperform, we would have a lot more takeovers,” Morel said. “But that’s not what happens.”

____

Weber reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

NY diocese facing flood of lawsuits files for bankruptcy


Newly ordained Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, left, is helped with his Crosier by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, April 10, 2014, during the installation of the tenth Bishop of the Albany Diocese at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, NY. Scharfenberger announced the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany declared bankruptcy, Wednesday, March 15, 2023, as it faces lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests. 

(J.S.Carras/The Record via AP, Pool File))

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The embattled Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany became the latest diocese in New York to seek bankruptcy protection Wednesday as it faces hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse.

Bishop Edward Scharfenberger announced the Chapter 11 filing after months of negotiations between the upstate New York diocese and lawyers representing plaintiffs over a potential settlement.

The Albany diocese, like others in the state, is dealing with a deluge of lawsuits dating to when New York temporarily suspended the statute of limitations to give victims of childhood abuse the ability to pursue even decades-old allegations against clergy members, teachers, Boy Scout leaders and others.

“The decision to file was not arrived at easily and I know it may cause pain and suffering, but we, as a Church, can get through this and grow stronger together,” Scharfenberger said in a release.

The bishop said that as cases brought under the state’s Child Victims Act were settled, “our limited self-insurance funds which have been paying those settlements, have been depleted.” He said the bankruptcy filing was the best way to ensure that all survivors with pending litigation receive some compensation.

The action halts legal actions against the diocese and will allow it to develop a reorganization plan that will determine available assets, Scharfenberger said.

Dioceses across the nation have filed for bankruptcy protection in recent years. In New York, Albany is the fifth of eight dioceses to take the action, a list that includes those based in Buffalo, Rochester and Rockville Centre on Long Island.

Some attorneys representing plaintiffs against the Albany diocese accused it of using bankruptcy as a legal tactic.

“We urge everyone to see the Diocese’s strategy for what it is: chicanery designed to perpetuate a $600 million corporation’s pattern of decadence, deception, and denial,” said attorney Jeff Anderson in a statement.

New York temporarily set aside its usual time limit on civil lawsuits for victims of childhood sexual abuse for a two-year period ending in August 2021. More than 9,000 lawsuits were filed against churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Ex-Wells Fargo exec to plead guilty for role in bank scandal


A Wells Fargo bank sign is affixed to a window on Jan. 13, 2021, in New York. A former Wells Fargo Bank executive accused of overseeing a ruse that created millions of bogus customer accounts has agreed Wednesday, March 15, 2023, to plead guilty to criminal charges likely to send her to prison for her role in the scandal. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Wells Fargo Bank executive accused of overseeing a ruse that created millions of bogus customer accounts has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges likely to send her prison for her role in the scandal.

The agreement filed Wednesday in a Los Angeles federal court calls for the former Wells Fargo executive, Carrie Tolstedt, to serve a 16-month prison sentence for obstructing regulators’ investigation into abusive sales practices that culminated in the bank paying billions of dollars in fines. Tolstedt, 63, also agreed to pay a $17 million fine in a separate civil settlement with the government that also bans her from working again in the banking industry.

Prosecutors are requesting an April 7 court hearing to review the plea agreement.

Tolstedt was the longtime head of the Wells Fargo’s division responsible for its sprawling network of retail branches, before leaving in 2016 just before evidence of the bank’s abusive sales tactics surfaced. After previously denying any wrongdoing, Tolstedt becomes the first Wells Fargo executive to be held criminally culpable for a scandal that resulted in the firing of 5,300 employees for falsifying bank records and other ethics violations.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo had previously admitted that its ambitious sales goals had fostered a culture that prodded its branch employees to open millions of unauthorized and fraudulent accounts from 2002 to 2016. The U.S. Justice Department alleged Tolstedt — now a resident of Scottsdale, Arizona — knew about the abuses dating back to 2004 and subsequently tried to cover up the misconduct in a memo prepared for regulators looking into the practices in 2015.

“Obstructing an investigation compromises the mission of those seeking the truth, and we will hold accountable any individual who attempts to conceal wrongdoing.” said Acting United States Attorney Joseph T. McNally.

RARE EARTH MINERALS U$A
Company gets a bit closer to raising $1.1B it needs for mine

By JOSH FUNK

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A mining company that wants to extract a collection of rare elements from beneath southeast Nebraska raised funds Wednesday toward its goal of finding the $1.1 billion it needs to build the mine that has been in the works for decades.

Shareholders of a special purpose acquisition company called GX Acquisition Corp. II overwhelmingly approved merging with NioCorp, a Centennial, Colorado-based mining company, according to a regulatory filing. About $15 million from the deal will go to NioCorp, the company said.

The GXII deal involves one of the risky shell companies once popular on Wall Street before many fell out of favor and had to be liquidated before they ever completed a deal. The SPACs, as they are known, are essentially companies created solely to merge with another business to invest in it.

NioCorp shareholders also approved an $81 million financing deal with Yorkville Advisors Global last week.

But the mine the company hopes to build about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Omaha near the town of Elk Creek could get an even bigger boost later this year. The Export-Import Bank of the United States recently issued a formal “letter of interest” saying that NioCorp may qualify for up to $800 million in financing. If that comes through after the bank conducts a detailed review of the project, NioCorp would have enough cash to build the mine.

First the project will have to undergo at least six to nine months of review by the bank. The letter from the Export-Import Bank is just a preliminary step, but it has NioCorp officials extremely optimistic.

“It’s unbelievably exciting. Sleep is a little hard to come by for our team right now,” NioCorp CEO Mark Smith said. “We see what’s happening and this project is actually going to happen.”

NioCorp has raised more than $80 million since 2013 to explore the site, but development of the project dates back to the 1970s when a different company first started drilling samples. The proposed mine is expected to create over 400 jobs if it is built.

The main element NioCorp plans to produce is a heat-resistant element called niobium, which is used to make steel lighter and stronger. The mine could also produce scandium that can be used to make aluminum stronger and titanium that would be used in paint production. The company has said analysis of samples from the site shows there is also a significant amount of rare earth elements used in a variety of high-tech products that are primarily produced in China. But it’s not yet clear whether it will be economically feasible to mine those rare earth elements that President Joe Biden wants to see more of produced domestically.

The letter the bank issued to NioCorp is one of the first given to a U.S. project since the Export-Import Bank decided last year — in response a Biden executive order — to expand funding to domestic projects proposed by companies planning to export their products. A bank spokeswoman said NioCorp operates in an industry the bank is eager to support because so few critical minerals are produced in the United States.

NioCorp officials say getting funding from the bank, which is run by the government under congressional authorization, would help level the playing field with Chinese companies that are heavily subsidized by their government. The Export-Import Bank would likely offer better terms than commercial banks, but NioCorp continues to talk with other banks.