News coverage highlights some threats to deer conservation but may mislead or omit key information

The news gave different weights to some threats when juxtaposed with the Red List of Threatened Species maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

 A group of researchers supported by FAPESP analyzed 192 news reports published on the internet between 2011 and 2021 on Brazilian deer species (Cervidae) in order to find out whether news of threats to these animals matched the actual risk of their extinction.

In an article on the study published in the journal Biological Conservation, the researchers conclude that news items located using the Google News search engine properly identified most threats to the eight deer species occurring in Brazil but ignored, underestimated or overestimated the threats to certain species.

The news gave different weights to some threats when juxtaposed with the Red List of Threatened Species maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN Red List is the most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. Furthermore, the news ignored the transmission of disease by domestic animals and low reproductive rates as factors affecting the survivability of deer species.

“We ranked the frequency of threats in news reports and developed a separate ranking of the threats listed by the IUCN. Part of the time, the news covered problems that coincided with the main threats determined as extinction risks by scientific studies. In other cases, however, reports overestimated threats such as roadkill and underestimated the effects of the transmission of livestock disease,” said Rúbia Ferreira dos Santos Morini, first author of the article and currently a master’s student at the State University of Campinas’s Institute of Biology (IB-UNICAMP).

Morini was supported by a scholarship from FAPESP while she was an undergraduate student at São Paulo State University’s School of Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences (FCAV-UNESP) in Jaboticabal attending the school’s Deer Research and Conservation Center (NUPECCE).

Threats

The authors compared three groups based on the animals’ vulnerability to certain threats: all deer species together (Group A), species of the genus Mazama (Group B), and species of the genera Blastocerus, Ozotoceros, and Odocoileus (Group C).

Group B included the Red brocket deer (Mazama americana) and the Small red brocket deer (Mazama jucunda), which live in forests and are threatened by fragmentation of habitats such as the Atlantic Rainforest.

Group C included the Marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus), the Pampas deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus) and the White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), all of which live in more open environments such as the Cerrado and Pantanal.

The researchers also constructed two threat frequency rankings, from 0 (none) to 6 (most frequent), based on the IUCN Red List and news items. They used statistical techniques to analyze the correlations between the rankings. Correlations were high for Group A, where the main threats were poaching (illegal trafficking and killing of wildlife), habitat loss/fragmentation and attacks by dogs, but the news underestimated livestock diseases and overestimated road kill, stories about which are popular with the media, although this threat is less significant than low reproductive efficiency and population sustainability (deer have few annual offspring).

“When an animal is hit by a moving automotive vehicle, human beings are also at risk. That’s probably the reason for so much media attention to road kill,” said Márcio Leite de Oliveira, last author of the article. Oliveira was a FAPESP-funded postdoctoral researcher at NUPECCE at the time of the study and is currently a researcher at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).

The findings for Groups B and C were less positive. News reports correlated little with actual threats in the former case, and hardly at all in the latter, with only deaths due to canine attacks having matching importance.

Poaching and habitat loss are the first- and second-ranking threats respectively according to the IUCN, but in the news this order is inverted owing to the many reports of deer “invading” cities, alongside under-reporting of poaching and the difficulty of identifying hunted species when “deer meat” is found.

With regard to Group C, news reports on canine attacks, disease, road kill and low reproductive efficiency were similarly numerous, whereas dogs are the worst enemies of deer according to the IUCN. “In the case of this threat, which we termed predation by domestic dogs, there was a significant gap between the volume of news reports and the number of cases reported by official channels and scientific networks, possibly because there are no human witnesses to these attacks,” Oliveira said.

There may also have been regional discrepancies, the authors note, since most of the news items analyzed came from Brazil’s Southeast region, where population density is higher and there are more internet and smartphone users.

Common mistakes

The authors highlight the frequency of erroneous information in the news, noting that this can hinder education of the public about the importance of species conservation. Reports of people who find lone fawns, for example, tend to assume they have been abandoned by their mothers or are orphans, validating efforts to take deer into captivity. The scientific literature shows, however, that females often leave nestlings to forage and soon return with food.

The researchers also note that the many news reports on deer found in urban areas make little mention of the main reason, which is habitat loss due to expansion of cities and agriculture. “It’s important for news items to cover the causes of the situations reported. Only then will readers understand the link between the presence of deer in urban areas and the degradation of nature, for example,” Morini said.

Finally, lack of information on diseases that affect deer, such as bluetongue disease, caused by a virus transmitted by mosquitoes that bite sick cattle, contributes to the failure to isolate domestic animals from wildlife around agricultural areas and helps keep the virus in circulation.

“We hope our findings will underscore the importance of the media as a source of information on the threats to wildlife. We also hope they will lead both the media and the scientific community to work collaboratively toward conservation of these species,” Oliveira said.

The other co-authors of the article are Rullian César Ribeiro, currently with a doctoral scholarship at NUPECCE; Isabela Pivetta Trentini; Eluzai Dinai Pinto Sandoval; and Amanda Rosa da Silva. 

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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JOURNAL

Biological Conservation

DOI

10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109853 

ARTICLE TITLE

Do media reports reflect the real threats to wildlife?

Police clash with pension demonstrators for second night in Paris

The protests over pension reform are the gravest challenge to President Macron’s authority since 2018 ‘Yellow Vest’ demonstrations.

A protester shoots a firework at police officers, with the Eiffel tower seen in the background, during a demonstration on Place de la Concorde in Paris on March 17, 2023 

[Julien De Rosa/AFP]

Published On 18 Mar 2023

Riot police clashed with protesters for a second night in Paris as demonstrations continued against the government’s plans to raise the French pension age.

The growing unrest since the start of the year, which has resulted in a wave of strikes and rubbish piling up on the streets of the French capital, has left President Emmanuel Macron with the gravest challenge to his authority since the so-called “Gilets Jaunes” or “Yellow Vest” protests of December 2018.

Police fired tear gas on Friday night to deal with crowd disorder as protesters gathered in the Place de la Concorde, near the Assemblee Nationale parliament building.

“Macron, Resign!” chanted some demonstrators, as they squared up to a line of riot police.

The protest at Paris’s elegant Place de Concorde started with a festive spirit as several thousand demonstrators chanted, danced and lit a huge bonfire. But it soon degenerated into a scene echoing Thursday night as riot police charged and used tear gas to empty the square while some protesters lobbed fireworks and threw paving stones at police.

On Thursday night, police also baton-charged the crowds and used water cannons while small groups, then set street fires in chic neighbourhoods nearby.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told radio station RTL that 310 people were arrested overnight, most of them in Paris.

Scattered protests were also held in cities around France – from a march in Bordeaux to a rally in Toulouse.

Port officers in Calais temporarily stopped ferries from crossing the English Channel to Dover. Some university campuses in Paris were blocked and protesters occupied a high-traffic ring road around the French capital.

Paris rubbish collectors have extended their strike for a 12th day, with piles of foul-smelling rubbish growing in the streets. Striking sanitation workers also continued to block Europe’s largest incineration site and two other sites that treat rubbish from the capital

Some yellow vest activists, who mounted formidable protests against Macron’s economic policies during his first term, were among those who relayed Friday’s Paris protest on social media. Police say that “radicalised yellow vests” are among troublemakers at protest marches.

The French are deeply attached to keeping the official retirement age at 62, which is among the lowest in OECD countries.

Macron’s administration used a special constitutional power to push through the pension reforms which will, among other things, gradually increase the retirement age from 62 to 64.

CGT union leader Philippe Martinez and Laurent Berger, secretary general of French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), hold a banner with other demonstrators in Paris, France, March 11, 2023 

[File: Benoit Tessier/Reuters]

More than eight out of 10 French people are unhappy with the government’s decision to skip the vote in parliament on changing the retirement age and 65 percent want strikes and protests to continue, a Toluna Harris Interactive poll for RTL radio showed.

Trade unions organising the opposition to the reforms have urged demonstrators to remain peaceful during more strikes and marches in the days ahead. They have also called on people to leave schools, factories, refineries and other workplaces to force Macron to abandon his plan to make the French work two more years, until 64, before receiving a full pension.

Left-wing and centrist opposition legislators filed a motion of no-confidence in parliament on Friday afternoon. But even though Macron lost his absolute majority in France’s lower house in elections last year, there was little chance this would go through – unless a surprise alliance of legislators from all sides is formed.

Going ahead without a vote “is a denial of democracy … a total denial of what has been happening in the streets for several weeks”, 52-year-old psychologist Nathalie Alquier said in Paris.

“It’s just unbearable.”

Protests are planned for this weekend and a new day of nationwide industrial action is scheduled for next Thursday. Teachers’ unions called for strikes next week, which could disrupt the emblematic Baccalaureate high-school exams.


SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

OUTLAW WHITE REPUBLICAN MEN

Wyoming is first US state to outlaw abortion pills

Republican governor Mark Gordon proposed total ban to be added to state constitution

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon in 2021. AP

The National
Mar 18, 2023

Wyoming on Friday became the first US state to ban the use of abortion pills.

It is the latest move in a campaign by conservative-led states to roll back access to abortion.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signed the ban on abortion pills in the state on Friday night, also allowing a separate measure restricting abortion to become law without his signature.

The Republican governor then appealed to legislators to act further by proposing a total ban on abortion be added to the state constitution and then putting it before voters for approval.

READ MORE
Abortion bans go into effect across the US

"I believe this question needs to be decided as soon as possible so that the issue of abortion in Wyoming can be finally resolved, and that is best done with a vote of the people," he said.

The Wyoming action comes amid a flurry of activity across the country by anti-abortion groups seeking to win a total ban on abortions following a landmark Supreme Court ruling last year.

Also looming is a ruling in a federal courtroom in Texas, where a judge is expected to decide imminently on a possible national ban on a widely used abortion pill.

The pill, mifepristone, was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration more than a decade ago and has been legally available for years.

Mifepristone is the first pill given in a medical abortion. Reuters

Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk could order the abortion pill taken off the market across the country.

Texas legislators are also considering a proposal that would not only ban abortion pills but also require internet service providers in the state to block access to websites where such pills are for sale by mail.

Mr Gordon said he would not back down in the fight against abortion.

"I believe all life is sacred and that every individual, including the unborn, should be treated with dignity and compassion," he said in a letter to the secretary of state on Friday evening.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned a 1973 ruling that established abortion as a constitutional right last year, anti-abortion activists have sought ways to enshrine a ban across the nation.

About 15 states already restrict access to mifepristone by requiring a physician to provide it, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group.
Mississippi's last abortion clinic - in pictures

 

PRO LIFE PROTESTER SIGN MAKES NO SENSE

A pro-choice sign rests on a chair outside of the Jackson Women's Health Organisation. Willy Lowry / The National


Updated: March 18, 2023

Australia’s Former ‘Favorite Muslim’ Courts Credibility With US Right

In 2017, the imam was exposed as a fraud. But six years on, Mohammad Tawhidi is seeing an explosion in his popularity and prestige abroad – particularly in the U.S.

By Joanna Psaros
March 09, 2023


Imam Mohammad Tawhidi poses for a photo with Croatian MP Marijana Petir, Dec. 12, 2022.

Credit: Croatian ParliamentADVERTISEMENT


On May 23, 2017, Australians awoke to the shocking news of a suicide bombing taking place at a pop concert in Manchester, England. The attack, for which Islamic State would later claim responsibility, was carried out by a 22-year-old British citizen of Libyan descent using homemade explosives. Twenty-two people were killed, including a number of children.

Coverage of the story dominated world media, including breakfast television program “Sunrise,” which two days later aired a special broadcast with the headline “Manchester Terror: Australia’s Muslim leaders speak out.” One leader interviewed was Imam Mohammad Tawhidi.

“We have a large number of youth that are being radicalized,” Tawhidi said gravely, clad in flowing black robes and a turban-like head covering.

“This happens because of the books we have, the Islamic scriptures that we have. They push the Muslim youth to believe that if you go out there and you kill the infidel, that’s how you will gain paradise.”

For the imam (a word connoting Islamic spiritual leadership), this was far from his first foray into the media spotlight – nor would it be his last. In his capacity as leader of the Islamic Association of South Australia, Tawhidi became somewhat of a regular fixture in Australia’s center-right circuit, making multiple appearances on “The Bolt Report,” “Ben Fordham Live,” “Today Tonight,” and “A Current Affair,” and with nationwide publications from The Daily Mail to The Australian providing additional coverage of his controversial views on Muslim immigration and the dangers of Islamic schools.

No mean feat, given his credentials were almost entirely fabricated.

Tawhidi’s tenuous credibility as a spokesperson for Australia’s Muslim community began to crumble with a series of ABC investigations into his background. A June 2017 article, titled “Imam Mohammad Tawhidi: The problem with the media’s favourite Muslim,” revealed that the self-proclaimed imam had no mosque, was not recognized by the Australian National Imams Council, and never graduated from the Iranian university at which he claimed to have completed a master’s degree in Islamic theology.

Doubt was also cast on Tawhidi’s ostentatious story of being forced into hiding and receiving police protection after a threat of beheading was allegedly posted on his Facebook page. 

Australia’s love affair with the outspoken imam soon came to an end. For the past few years, local media coverage of Tawhidi’s activities has been confined to a handful of less than flattering profiles on his legal troubles (last year saw Tawhidi successfully sued for defamation after calling a Melbourne immigration lawyer an “ISIS promoter”).

But in a bizarre twist, Mohammad Tawhidi’s cancellation in Australia appears to have directly coincided with an explosion in his popularity and prestige abroad – particularly in the United States, Israel, and certain Arab Gulf states. In a world of “fake news,” it seems that clickbait trumps facts. And when it comes to clickbait, nothing trumps Trump.

At the time of writing, Tawhidi boasts a Twitter following of 809,300 – a number that dwarfs Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s 625,400 and includes high-profile U.S. Republicans, including Ellie Cohanim, Nikki Haley, Brian E. Leib, and Donald Trump Jr. And while former U.S. President Donald J. Trump does not currently follow Tawhidi, there’s evidence that Australia’s former favorite imam has successfully influenced the man himself.

From his proposed ban on Muslim immigration to labeling Black Lives Matter protesters “thugs,” Trump’s presidency was characterized by social media scandals and racially charged unrest. But accusations of Islamophobia against Trump reached a peak in April 2019 after the then-president posted a doctored video of Democrat Ilhan Omar speaking at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) the previous month – endangering the life of the congresswoman in the process.

“WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” Trump captioned the clip, which depicts Omar stating “CAIR was founded after 9/11, because they recognized some people did something.”

The video then splices between graphic footage of the Twin Towers collapsing taken from various news channels. The words “SOME PEOPLE DID SOMETHING?” are repeated in bold on a plain black background.




Omar’s speech was intended to highlight the perceived injustice of the United States’ treatment of its moderate Muslim community in the wake of 9/11. Her full quote is: “[CAIR] recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” But the damage had been done.

Ilhan Omar, who is a Muslim American, released a statement alleging she received an increased number of death threats in the days following this tweet. Trump would later instigate further online attacks against the representative in a similar vein, including the erroneous accusation that Omar was “out partying” on the night of September 11. Later, a New York man was arrested and charged with threatening to assault and murder her; the accused was reportedly a hard-line Trump supporter.

In June 2019, an article was published by The Intercept concerning the origins of Trump’s infamous tweet. The article alleged that a video the same or similar to the one posted by Trump actually originated from the Twitter account of Mohammad Tawhidi (the post has now been removed), before being re-tweeted by Republican Dan Crenshaw, and eventually coming to the attention of Trump himself. 

“Omar’s remarks had previously garnered little attention, but the cleric’s inaccurate caption for the video – ‘Omar mentions 9/11 and does not consider it a terrorist attack’ – propelled it into the mainstream news media,” the article states.

On the subject of Tawhidi, The Intercept concluded that “even a cursory review of his Twitter feed undercuts the idea that he is focused on the reform of Islam or the pursuit of peace, since it is devoted mainly to reinforcing the prejudices of right-wing trolls and nativist politicians, echoing their racist, sexist, and xenophobic rhetoric.”



But the imam’s Islamophobic underpinnings have proved no impediment in making friends in high places. In the months following the tweet, Mohammad Tawhidi was pictured with a number of high-profile political and diplomatic leaders, including conservative Canadian senators Larry W. Smith and Michelle Rempel Garner.

On December 12 of last year, the Croatian Parliament published a press release stating that the leader of the Croatia-Israel Interparliamentary Friendship Group, Marijana Petir, had met with Imam Mohammad Tawhidi to discuss security challenges in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism.

Though her name may be unfamiliar to most Australians, Petir has attracted infamy in both Croatia and wider Europe for comments decrying the “radicalization” of neighboring Bosnia’s Muslim population, and calls for Europe to return to its “Christian roots.” In December 2021, the MP found an unlikely ally in an organization called the Global Imams Council. The Council issued a statement slamming Petir’s inclusion in the European Islamophobia Report 2020 as “inaccurate, irresponsible, and defamatory.”

But who, exactly, is part of this group, who claim to be the world’s largest transnational body of Muslim religious leaders? All roads, it would seem, lead back to Tawhidi.

According to the body’s official website, the Global Imams Council (GIC) is an Islamic interfaith network representing over 1,300 Muslim faith leaders and scholars. The Council claims to engage with a number of prestigious civil and political bodies including the United Nations, European Parliament, and the U.S. Department of State – though not necessarily with the knowledge or consent of such organizations. (In November, a representative from the American Bar Association, which was then listed as a partner, denied any association with the GIC and advised they had requested the page remove reference to their organization.)

Officially, Imam Mohammad Tawhidi is listed as GIC’s vice president. The true extent of his involvement with the group is, however, somewhat unclear, with the six other imams named as comprising GIC’s Governing Board appearing to have little to no online presence.

While reporters did manage to contact Peer Syed Mudassir Shah, listed as GIC’s director of South Asia, the director could provide little detail as to the group’s origins or purpose and told The Diplomat he was not directly involved in the advocacy work detailed on the organization’s website. The only other Council member Mudassir Shah had spoken to was Mohammad Tawhidi, who invited him to join the group after reaching out on Twitter last February.

The GIC’s public defense of Marijana Petir is but one example of its arguably curious stance on global affairs. In December 2021, the group made headlines in a number of fringe right media publications, including The Epoch Times, following a press release calling for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Representatives for the Russian Islamic leader Grand Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, who appeared to have signed the statement GIC released, would later refute any endorsement, calling the Council’s claim “a blatant lie” that “does not correspond to reality.”

“It is noteworthy that after telephone conversations with the offices of the Supreme Mufti of Egypt Sheikh Shauki Allam, the Supreme Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina Hussein Kavazovich, and others, it was reliably discovered that the spiritual leadership of these countries also had nothing to do with this document,” the representative added.

Another notable statement from the GIC’s office concerned their endorsement of a definition of antisemitism that critics claim may stifle pro-Palestinian voices by conflating criticism of Israel and its settlements with racial or religious prejudice. The move was welcomed by a number of Republican politicians, including Deborah Lipstadt, Ellie Cohanim, and Brian E. Leib, as well as prominent Israeli-American lobbyist Adam Milstein and conservative editor of The Washington Examiner Seth Mandel, all of whom retweeted the Council’s press release.

Mohammad Tawhidi himself regularly writes for Israel-based news outlets and has claimed – incorrectly – to be the first Shia imam to pay respects at Auschwitz. Tawhidi’s author profile on The Times of Israel website states that he was nominated for Australian of the Year 2019.

Given the wealth of reporting on his fabricated qualifications and claims, it’s hard to imagine Tawhidi’s claims withstanding even the most casual inquiry. Even more outlandish is the prospect that the controversial commentator who once called a Democratic congresswomen with a Muslim background “ISIS with lipstick” could be considered a genuinely appropriate choice to address one of the most important diplomatic movements to emerge from the Trump presidency: the Abraham Accords Global Leadership Summit 2022.

In light of this, Tawhidi’s unlikely second act success suggests a significant, if unspoken, symbiotic relationship between the self-styled imam, and the right-leaning cultural and political players who promote his dubious brand of interfaith leadership. As predicted by Muslim culture researcher Chloe Patton back in 2017, “in the pantomime that is media coverage of Islam and Muslims, it is far easier to be fake than real.”

GUEST AUTHOR
Joanna Psaros is a Sydney-based freelance journalist. She has a Master of Law and International Development and also writes for Independent Australia, True Crime News Weekly, and Green Left.

Will Korea Aerospace Industries Be Privatized?

The debate surrounding the possible privatization of KAI represents fundamental questions about the future of “K-Defense.”

By Chris H. Park
March 17, 2023

Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) has played a pivotal role in developing South Korea’s domestic technical capacity for aircraft manufacturing. KAI has license-produced F-16 fighter jets since the 1980s and jointly developed the T-50 Golden Eagle training jet with Lockheed Martin. It also has collaborated with General Electric to develop and produce jet engines.

In 2022, the South Korean defense industry celebrated new global recognition by achieving $17.3 billion in arms exports, doubling figures from the previous year. Although the limelight focused on howitzers and tanks, South Korean planes made remarkable progress as well. KAI’s KF-21 fighter jet, developed over two decades, successfully completed a test flight, placing South Korea among the few countries with advanced supersonic fighters. Poland also purchased KAI’s KA-50 light combat aircraft as part of a $12 billion arms deal signed on the sidelines of the 2022 NATO Summit.

The South Korean government — through the Export-Import Bank of South Korea — owns the majority stake in KAI. Privatization of the partly state-owned company has been a recurring topic for over a decade as various conglomerates express interest in an acquisition deal. Firms like Korean Air, Hyundai Motor and Hanwha Defense have previously floated acquiring KAI, to much public interest.

The latest rumor once again surrounds Hanwha, especially after it acquired Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in December 2022. Hanwha — as South Korea’s largest defense firm — has vowed to be the “Korean version of Lockheed Martin” and seeks to build on a successful year exporting howitzers and tanks to Egypt and Poland.

Not all are supportive, however. KAI President Kang Ku-young notably shared that 99 percent of senior executives oppose any acquisition deals, stating that “KAI has the organization and capabilities to walk the path of independent survival.”

There is a good reason why there is so much prolonged attention on privatizing KAI: the debate surrounding the KAI acquisition represents the fundamental questions about the future of “K-Defense” as it comes off its most commercially successful year.

Export Profit Pressure

Chae Woo-suk, the president of the Korea Defense Industry Association, stated that “KAI, which is bound by public corporate restraints, cannot make large investments with a long-term perspective like its competitors in developed countries.” Privatization is considered a viable solution to reduce the inefficiencies of a quasi-state-run firm and to enhance international competitiveness. For example, KAI has witnessed changes in management personnel with every presidential succession. Private ownership could bring greater stability to KAI with leadership and longer-term stewardship of its competitiveness. With the KAI acquisition, Hanwha would further establish itself as one of the largest defense companies in the world that could allocate more resources to its redoubled aerospace division. 

South Koreans consider their defense industry as — in former President Moon Jae-in’s words — the “future economic lifeline” of the country. 2022 marked a landmark year that demonstrated the growth and export potential of the South Korean defense industry. There now is immense pressure to not only sustain but build on recent gains, as the incumbent Yoon Suk-yeol administration vowed South Korea will become the world’s fourth largest arms seller by 2027.

Privatization will not be a panacea for KAI to overcome large technological hurdles to become a leading military aircraft manufacturer in the world. Some argue that the government should support KAI further until it attains greater technical capacity. The defense aerospace industry has a notoriously long time to recoup investments; private firms, faced with profitability concerns, may reduce investment.

The privatization of state-run firms, in general, has been a politically fraught subject in South Korea. Labor unions have already come out in opposition to KAI privatization. Further, Hanwha’s acquisition would raise concerns about monopoly control of South Korea’s defense industry. Competition breeds innovation and new technology in the defense industry. A smaller firm, LIG Nex1, reportedly is also bidding to acquire KAI, although questions remain whether it has sufficient capital to sustainably invest in KAI.

How Much to Indigenize?

In the 1970s, President Park Chung-hee jump-started the South Korean defense industry under the mantra of “self-sufficient defense” as a response to the Nixon Doctrine. The domestic industrial base could allay alliance abandonment fears and ensure a seamless weapons supply for the South Korean military. The strength of the South Korea-U.S. military alliance and South Korea’s alliance abandonment fears have since ebbed and flowed. Much of the alliance debate today centers around the strength of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence in light of redoubled North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear weapons program.

Indigenization, however, remains an important goal. The Yoon administration started the “component localization development support project” that provides state support for domestic firms developing core weapons components. This pursuit has particular significance to KAI because the most inchoate area of South Korea’s indigenous development has been military aviation. The Korea Defense Industry Association pinned South Korea’s overall defense indigenization rate at 77.2 percent in 2021; for aerospace, the rate is slightly over 50 percent. Further, indigenously developed planes constitute a smaller portion of the South Korean defense industry, which has historically focused on developing land-based systems and ships. Defense aerospace is thought to be the next frontier for domestic development and production.

KAI has been the main firm indigenously developing military aircraft, including next-generation fighter jets, helicopters, and unmanned aircraft. It also set benchmark indigenization rate goals for core components and developed advanced radar technology that countries, such as the United States, were unwilling to share. There are doubts about whether a private aerospace firm will direct sufficient support toward domestically developing and producing military aircraft. Skeptics of privatization notably argue that the KF-21 project would not have happened without active state involvement in KAI operations.

However, this raises the fundamental question of how much indigenization is desirable (or even technologically attainable). South Korea risks developing an inefficient autarkic defense industry if it places undue emphasis on indigenization. A large amount of capital and sophisticated technology is required to catch up to advanced producers. Intense fixation on increasing the indigenization rate — especially in areas like avionics where South Korea is far behind other countries — risks colossal costs and inefficiencies.

Stigma of Defense Corruption

Highly publicized investigations in the 1990s that implicated top military and political leaders revealed excessive waste and fraud in the South Korean defense industry. Reports of unexplained acquisitions spending and contractor malfeasance in the 2010s further ignited concerns about the ongoing challenges of transparency and accountability in the South Korean defense industry. The legacy of defense-related corruption continues to weigh on the public consciousness. Deep suspicions have generated intense public scrutiny and misunderstanding about the arms industry.

Today, general euphoria has taken over the South Korean defense industry due to monumental sales figures from 2022. Support and interest in the industry from bipartisan political leaders and the public remain high. However, future technological hurdles and research cost overruns may reignite public suspicions and media speculations as the stigma of defense-related corruption remains in the public consciousness.

KAI has been at the center of dealing with the fallout of the defense corruption investigations. Its executives recently were investigated for inflating costs as scrutiny piled on the firm’s heavy research spending amid technological hurdles. Most executives were acquitted, as the case appeared to be based on a spurious understanding of the defense industry.

Proponents of KAI privatization argue that a private firm — free from strings to the government in power — could avoid unnecessary scrutiny and more effectively deal with these issues. Company leadership that lasts more than the five-year presidential term and is unconnected to the incumbent administration could provide a more prudent public face through business downturns and technological hurdles.

The KAI acquisition debate raises fundamental questions about the future of the South Korean arms industry and the growth of its domestic defense industrial base. As South Korea looks to cement recent gains in the global arms market, political leaders in Seoul and defense manufacturers will have to balance competing priorities while facing an increasingly competitive international arms market.

Jewish communal world baffled after Ben Gvir targets mainstream US aid group JDC

National security minister has vowed to shut down Joint Distribution Committee program tackling crime in Arab communities, branding the century-old, apolitical group ‘leftist’

By PHILISSA CRAMER

Today

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at the entrance to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, March 9, 2023. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

JTA — An American Jewish group that has provided aid to Jewish communities in crisis for more than a century has been targeted by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir despite its nonpartisan stance.

Ben Gvir said on Wednesday that he was shutting down a program dedicated to reducing violence in Arab Israeli towns. His reason: The program is operated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which he called a “leftist organization.”

“JDC is a nonpolitical organization and has been so since our founding in 1914,” Michael Geller, a spokesperson for JDC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Israel’s Judiciary: Reform or Ruin?Keep Watching


Ben Gvir’s characterization baffled many across the Jewish communal world who know the JDC as a nonpartisan group with an extensive track record of providing humanitarian aid to Jews in distress.

To them, Ben Gvir’s criticism of the group is the latest sign that the rupture of political norms in Israel extends beyond the judicial reforms advanced by the government, which have sparked mass public protests and dire warnings from security officials, business leaders, academics, legal experts and the political opposition.

“To call the JDC a left-wing organization is a joke. It is not political in any way,” said Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, co-CEO of the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit that works toward an “equal and shared society” for Jewish and Arab Israelis.

Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said he anticipated changes by the right-wing government, which was inaugurated in December. But he was surprised by Ben Gvir’s announcement.

“I could expect revisiting collaboration with organizations that are branded as civil rights or human rights or Israeli-Palestinian organizations,” he added. “But the JDC — it’s very strange.”

Founded in 1914 by the American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff to aid Jews living in British Mandatory Palestine, the JDC has distributed billions of dollars in assistance across 70 countries — including, over the last year, to 43,000 Ukrainian Jews. It played a central role in aiding Holocaust survivors following World War II, as well as in the resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union.

JDC staff preparing for online seders in Odesa, Ukraine, April 7, 2022. (JDC)

Among its biggest sources of support are Jewish federations, the nonpartisan umbrella charities found in nearly every major North American Jewish community.

“JDC is an apolitical organization that has worked with every government since the establishment of the State of Israel, providing critical services to the elderly, youth-at-risk, people with disabilities and other underserved populations across all sectors, including Haredim and Arab-Israelis,” the Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement.

“JDC’s activities are a living and breathing example of the Jewish values of tikkun olam and tzedakah that guide Jewish Federations’ work every day,” the statement said, using the Hebrew phrases that connote the Jewish imperative to repair the world and give charity.

In Israel, the group funds and operates efforts to help needy populations — including immigrants, the elderly, people with disabilities and people living in poverty. Those efforts often involve working with the government, which in 2007 gave the JDC Israel’s most prestigious prize for its work. This year, according to a spokesman, the group is spending $129 million on Israel initiatives.

The JDC’s government-funded programs include the anti-violence effort that Ben Gvir is targeting. It was made possible last year due to nearly $1 billion in funding to curb crime in Arab communities by the previous unity government led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. The allocation followed lobbying by Arab and civil society organizations, including the Abraham Initiatives, which is now monitoring how the money is being used as well as its impact.


Illustrative: Arab Israelis protest against violence, organized crime and killings in their communities, in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, October 22, 2021. 

(Jamal Awad/Flash90)

Arab communities in Israel have seen a surge in violence in recent years, driven mainly, but not exclusively, by organized crime. Arab Israelis say police have failed to crack down on powerful criminal organizations and for years largely ignored the violence, which includes family feuds, mafia turf wars, and attacks on women.

Arab citizens of Israel make up 84% of crime victims despite comprising just 20% of the population, according to government data released last year that showed a sharp rise in the proportion of Arab Israelis who had experienced violent crime.

This week, commenting on the shooting death of an Arab Israeli woman, Arab Israeli opposition lawmaker Ahmad Tibi accused Ben Gvir of being “occupied with other matters,” such as clashes with the attorney general and police officials in Tel Aviv. “Maybe the time has come for senior officials to demonstrate responsibility when it comes to crime organizations and weapons running rampant,” Tibi said.

Other initiatives have aimed to tackle the violence in ways that go beyond policing. The program that Ben Gvir said he is shutting down is one of them. Called Stop the Bleeding, it involves multiple government ministries as well as local community groups and education efforts and has operated in seven cities with large Arab populations, including a Bedouin town and Lod, a city with significant Arab organized crime networks that also has a large Jewish population.

Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said the program was already starting to bear fruit and had contributed to a slowdown in a multi-year rise in murders. Canceling the program, he said, reflects the current government’s general approach to tackling problems.

“It’s not about collaboration. It’s not about hearing the concerns and pain and hopes and needs of the Arab community,” he said. “It’s about doing everything unilaterally, and really without a lot of care for the lives of those people. I think that’s what we are watching.”

An employee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, right, hands out an aid package to a Jewish woman in Kharkiv, Ukraine during the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. (Courtesy of JDC)

The JDC is not the first mainstream group to be targeted by far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau’s government, whose signature legislative effort aims to sap the power and independence of the judiciary. That legislation has given rise to a sweeping protest movement and to grave warnings about the country’s future from a broad range of public figures — including elder statesmen, foreign governments and religious leaders.

Avi Maoz, the leader of the anti-LGBTQ Noam Party who briefly held a leadership role in the Education Ministry, compiled a list of American and British groups that he believes are trying to impose their liberal values on schoolchildren.

“We must protect our people and our state from the infiltration of the alien bodies that arrive from foreign countries, foreign bodies, foreign foundations,” Maoz once said. Maoz has since resigned from that role, saying that he did not think he was being sufficiently empowered to fulfill his goals by Netanyahu’s government.

But Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said he remains concerned about civil-society programs, especially those falling under the purview of far-right ministers including Ben-Gvir or those funded by American Jews.

People who are paying attention to local governance expect further tensions around initiatives that do not match Ben Gvir’s attitudes about harsh policing. Ben Gvir wants officers to have the right to shoot people who throw stones, has called for the death penalty for terrorists and is increasingly clashing with police officials as he demands they take a tougher stance against protesters. Multiple former police commissioners have called for his dismissal.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (L) and Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai attend the inauguration of new police station in southern Israel, March 14, 2023. (Flash90)

“Ben-Gvir has his own political agenda and he has his own ax to grind, and at the moment, I think he’s not keen on developing services of the Arab population, either in security or juvenile delinquency or education,” said Amos Avgar, who worked for the JDC in Israel, Russia and the US for 30 years until 2010, including as chief programming officer.

Avgar emphasized that the JDC has always studiously avoided political activity. “If there’s one thing that the JDC is not, it is not political,” he said. “It always shied [away] from anything that had the smell of politics and never dealt with any project by political agenda.”

It’s unclear how quickly Ben Gvir’s announcement, made during a government meeting and first reported by the Kan public broadcaster, will ultimately translate into changes. Geller, the JDC spokesman, said the organization had learned about the criticism only from the media, not from Ben Gvir’s office. Later, amid an outcry, Ben Gvir’s office said the funding decision had followed a review of contracts that revealed missing documentation from the JDC, a charge that the JDC denied.

Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said he didn’t have high hopes for the program’s future.

“I think the first [characterization] is unfortunately going to be the correct one — that he is actually intending to stop it, which is very unfortunate because it is among the more serious programs that are willing to deal with this catastrophe,” he said. “And it shows again that the current minister is not so much interested in saving lives of Arab citizens.”

‘Step up the pressure’: Demonstrators prepare for 11th week of escalating protests

Tel Aviv anti-overhaul rally to kick off with national anthem sung by teen girl whose performance was nixed over ultra-Orthodox man in audience; ex-Bank of Israel chief to speak

By TOI STAFF

Today

Demonstrators block a highway during a protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 16, 2023. (AP/Ohad Zwigenberg)

The escalating mass protests against the government’s efforts to hamstring the judiciary were set to continue on Saturday night with rallies planned for Tel Aviv and dozens of other locations around the country.

The demonstrations will mark the 11th consecutive weekend protest since Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced the plan to strip power from the country’s courts to the benefit of the ruling coalition, setting off fierce backlash from opponents who believe the move will fundamentally alter Israel’s democratic system by removing its only real check on unfettered majority rule.

Recent weeks have seen the rallies swell as the government plowed ahead with the legislation, including this week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers immediately slapped down President Isaac Herzog’s proposal for an alternative court reform. Opposition leaders, however, have rallied behind the president’s plan, calling the proposal workable but not ideal.

In his announcement, Herzog warned that the country was teetering at the edge of an abyss and risked descending into civil war.

Protest organizers planned Saturday’s main rally to “step up pressure,” beginning with a 6 p.m. march from Kikar Dizengoff to the central demonstration on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street at 7 p.m.

The main rally will begin with a rendition of the national anthem, by 13-year-old Eliyana Hayut, who was told this week she couldn’t sing in a show at the Merom HaGalil Regional Council because it would offend an ultra-Orthodox man in the audience.

Former Bank of Israel chief, Jacob Frenkel will give one of the speeches at the central demonstration, organizers said. Frenkel is a leading economist who headed the Bank of Israel from 1991 to 2000 and until recently chaired JP Morgan Chase International.

Former Bank of Israel Governor Jacob Frenkel, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem, June 24, 2013. (Miriam Alster / Flash90)

Smaller demonstrations to “save democracy” will take place at around 120 other locations around the country, including in Or Akiva for the first time.

Police are expected to begin to close roads in Tel Aviv from the late afternoon.

“Together we will win,” an announcement for the demonstrations said.

Some demonstrators have adopted creative means to express their opposition, including by dressing as characters from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” taking to the sea, painting city streets red and setting up a mock “army recruitment center” in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak.

Protesters supporting women’s rights dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale TV series traveling to a protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to overhaul the judicial system, at a railway station in Jerusalem, March 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Protesters will try to block Netanyahu from reaching Ben Gurion International Airport for a flight to London later this week. Earlier this month, Netanyahu was forced to take a helicopter to the airport while demonstrators jammed the roads.

The premier is likely to face demonstrations in the British capital, similar to those seen during his recent trips to Rome and Berlin.

In addition to the public protests, IDF reservists have increasingly expressed doubt about their continued service, or said they will stop showing up, due to the government’s plans.

Hundreds of elite reservists on Thursday announced they will halt their volunteer service starting Sunday in protest.

Last week’s Saturday night protests drew an estimated 300,000 participants and on Thursday protesters staged nationwide demonstrations as part of “escalating resistance to dictatorship.”

Israelis protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judicial system block the main freeway in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

The government’s plan, as it stands, will allow the Knesset to override court decisions with the barest majority, preemptively shield laws from judicial oversight altogether, and put the selection of all judges in the hands of coalition politicians.

Opponents argue it will weaken Israel’s democratic character, remove a key element of its checks and balances and leave minorities unprotected. Supporters call it a much-needed reform to rein in an over-activist court.

The overhaul plans have drawn intense public criticism and fierce opposition across Israel, sparking the mass protests and dire warnings from economists, legal professionals, academics and security officials. Protesters have been pouring into the streets since January in multiple days of “disruption” and “resistance.”

A number of polls have indicated the legislation is broadly unpopular with the public.

Indigenous Peruvians seize oil station, demand cleanup

Indigenous Peruvians have occupied an oil pumping station deep in the Amazon and prevented 41 workers from leaving the installation, state-owned oil firm Petroperu said yesterday.

Saturday, 18 Mar 2023 

LIMA, March 18 — Indigenous Peruvians have occupied an oil pumping station deep in the Amazon and prevented 41 workers from leaving the installation, state-owned oil firm Petroperu said yesterday.

The Indigenous activists are demanding that Petroperu clean up areas damaged by an oil spill decades ago.

“Petroperu has been developing all possible actions to achieve the release of the 41 people who remain deprived of their rights at the Morona Station of the Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline,” the company said in a statement.

It said activists from the Fernando Rosas community had arrived at the site on Wednesday.

By occupying the site, the activists have denied workers the “right to free transit” and have also forced them to stay outdoors, including overnight, the statement added.

The Morona Station sits in a jungle area of Loreto department, about 1,000 kilometres northeast of capital Lima.

The Indigenous activists said in a letter sent to authorities, which AFP saw, that an oil spill around the pumping station 25 years ago caused damage that was never reversed. They said they would block pumping until mitigation work begins.

Built in the 1970s, the Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline is the longest in the country, extending 1,100 kilometres from Amazon oil fields over the Andes mountains to the northern Peruvian coast.

In 2016, spills along sections of the Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline impacted Amazon rainforest communities, including in the Morona district.

Peru has been hit by a series oil spills in recent years, including last year when Lima declared a state of emergency after almost 12,000 barrels of crude oil spilled into the sea. The disaster affected more than 700,000 people and forced the closure of 20 beaches and dozens of tourism businesses. — AFP

China took down data on potential insight into origins of Covid-19, says WHO

China should have shared the data three years ago when the pandemic had begun in 2020, the global health body said.

Scroll Staff

Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. | Screengrab via @DrTedros / Twitter

The World Health Organization said on Friday that China took down data related to a research that might have provided more insight into the origins of the Covid-19 virus.

“Last Sunday, WHO was made aware of data published on the GISAID [Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data] database in late January, and taken down again recently,” Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “The data, from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, relates to samples taken at the Huanan market in Wuhan, in 2020.”

He added that scientists from a number of countries downloaded the data and analysed it while it was still online.

“As soon as we became aware of this data, we contacted the Chinese CDC [Centre for Disease Control] and urged them to share it with WHO and the international scientific community so it can be analysed,” Ghebreyesus said.

The World Health Organization said that China should have shared the data three years ago when the pandemic had begun in 2020. “Understanding how the pandemic began remains both a moral and scientific imperative,” WHO said.

The global health body also said that Covid-19 could soon transition to a point where it is similar to flu.

“I think we’re coming to that point where we can look at Covid-19 in the same way we look at seasonal influenza, a threat to health, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that is not disrupting our society or disrupting our hospital system” WHO said.

Meanwhile, India has reported an increase in the number of Covid-19 cases this week along with other infleunza cases. On Saturday, India recorded more than 800 cases of coronavirus in a single day for the first time after 126 days. The number of active cases of Covid-19 in the country rose to 5,389 on Saturday.

On Thursday, the Centre had asked Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat – states which have been recording most of the new cases – to ramp up testing, monitor new clusters and send samples of international travellers, reported The Indian Express.

WHO accuses China of hiding data that may link COVID’s origins to animals

By Benjamin Mueller
Updated March 18, 2023 — 

The World Health Organisation rebuked Chinese officials for withholding research that may link COVID-19’s origin to wild animals, asking why the data had not been made available three years ago and why it is now missing.

Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virus experts downloaded and began analysing the research, which appeared online in January. They say it supports the idea that the pandemic could have begun when illegally traded raccoon dogs infected humans at a Wuhan seafood market.


A security guard waves for journalists to clear the road after a convoy carrying the World Health Organisation team entered the Huanan Seafood Market in January 2021.CREDIT:AP

But the gene sequences were removed from a scientific database once the experts offered to collaborate on the analysis with their Chinese counterparts.

“These data could have — and should have — been shared three years ago,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. The missing evidence now “needs to be shared with the international community immediately.”

According to the experts who are reviewing it, the research offers evidence that raccoon dogs — foxlike animals known to spread coronaviruses — had left behind DNA in the same place in the Wuhan market that genetic signatures of the new coronavirus also were discovered.

To some experts, that finding suggests that the animals may have been infected and may have transmitted the virus to humans.

A security guard sits outside the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, CREDIT:GETTY

With huge amounts of genetic information drawn from swabs of animal cages, carts and other surfaces at the Wuhan market in early 2020, the genetic data had been the focus of restless anticipation among virus experts since they learned of it a year ago in a paper by Chinese scientists.

A French biologist discovered the genetic sequences in the database last week, and she and a team of colleagues began mining them for clues about the origins of the pandemic.


That team has not yet released a paper outlining the findings. But the researchers delivered an analysis of the material to a WHO advisory group studying COVID’s origins this week in a meeting that also included a presentation by Chinese researchers regarding the same data.

RELATED ARTICLE


Coronavirus pandemic
New data links COVID’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

The analysis seemed to clash with earlier contentions by Chinese scientists that samples taken in the market that were positive for the coronavirus had been ferried in by sick people alone, said Sarah Cobey, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in recent research.

“It’s just very unlikely to be seeing this much animal DNA, especially raccoon dog DNA, mixed in with viral samples, if it’s simply mostly human contamination,” Cobey said.

Questions remain about how the samples were collected, what precisely they contained and why the evidence had disappeared. In light of the ambiguities, many scientists reacted cautiously, saying that it was difficult to assess the research without seeing a complete report.



The idea that a lab accident could have accidentally set off the pandemic has become the focus of renewed interest in recent weeks, thanks in part to a fresh intelligence assessment from the Department of Energy and hearings held by the new Republican House leadership.

But a number of virus experts not involved with the latest analysis said that what was known about the swabs gathered in the market buttressed the case that animals sold there had sparked the pandemic.

A convoy of vehicles carrying the World Health Organisation team enters the interior of the Huanan Seafood Market in January 2021.CREDIT:AP

“It’s exactly what you’d expect if the virus was emerging from an intermediate or multiple intermediate hosts in the market,” Cobey said. “I think ecologically, this is close to a closed case.”

Cobey was one of 18 scientists who signed an influential letter in the journal Science in May 2021 urging serious consideration of a scenario in which the virus could have spilled out of a laboratory in Wuhan.

On Friday, she said lab leaks continued to pose enormous risks and that more oversight of research into dangerous pathogens was needed. But Cobey added that an accumulation of evidence — relating to the clustering of human cases around the Wuhan market, the genetic diversity of viruses there and now the raccoon dog data — strengthened the case for a market origin.

The new genetic data does not appear to prove that a raccoon dog was infected with the coronavirus. Even if it had been, the possibility would remain that another animal could have passed that virus to people, or even that someone infected with the virus could have transmitted it to a raccoon dog.

Some scientists stressed those points Friday, saying that the new genetic data did not appreciably shift the discussion about the pandemic’s origins.

“We know it’s a promiscuous virus that infects a bunch of species,” said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, who also signed the May 2021 letter in Science.

Chinese scientists had released a study in February 2022 looking at the market samples. Some scientists speculated that the Chinese researchers might have posted the data in January because they were required to make them available as part of a review of their study by a scientific journal.

The Chinese study had suggested that samples that were positive for the virus had come from infected people, rather than from animals sold in the market. That fit with a narrative long promulgated by Chinese officials: that the virus sprang not only from outside the market but from outside the country altogether.

Raccoon dogs are related to foxes and are known to be able to transmit the coronavirus.

But the Chinese report had left clues that viral material at the market had been jumbled together with genetic material from animals. And scientists said the new analysis by the international team illustrated an even stronger link with animals.

“Scientifically, it doesn’t prove that raccoon dogs were the source, but it sure smells like infected raccoon dogs were at the market,” said Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Centre Shreveport.

He added: “It raises more questions about what the Chinese government really knows.”

Scientists cautioned that it was not clear that the genetic material from the virus and from raccoon dogs had been deposited at the same time.

Depending on the stability of genetic material from the virus and the animals, said Michael Imperiale, a virologist at the University of Michigan, “they could have been deposited there at potentially widely different times.”

Still, Dr Arturo Casadevall, an immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who co-authored a recent study with Imperiale examining the origin of the coronavirus, said that linking animal and viral material nevertheless added to the evidence of a natural spillover event.

“I would say it strengthens the zoonotic idea,” he said, “that is, the idea that it came from an animal at the market.”

In the absence of the actual animal that first spread the virus to people, Casadevall said, assessing the origins of an outbreak would always involve weighing probabilities. In this case, animals sold at the market were removed before researchers began taking samples in early 2020, making it impossible to find a culprit.

Tim Stearns, dean of graduate and postgraduate studies at the Rockefeller University in New York, said the latest finding was “an interesting piece of the puzzle,” although he said it was “not in itself definitive and highlights the need for a more thorough investigation.”

For all the missing elements, some scientists said the new findings highlighted just how much information scientists had managed to assemble about the beginnings of the pandemic, including home addresses for early patients and sequence data from the market.

Theodora Hatziioannou, a virologist at the Rockefeller University, said it was critical that the raw data be released. But, she said, “I think the evidence is overwhelming at the moment toward a market origin.”

And the latest data, she said, “makes it even more unlikely that this started somewhere else.”

Felicia Goodrum, an immunobiologist at the University of Arizona, said that finding the virus in an actual animal would be the strongest evidence of a market origin. But finding virus and animal material in the same swab was close.

“To me,” she said, “this is the next best thing.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Goldman Faces Lawmakers’ Demands for US Probe of Role With SVB

Gregory Korte
Fri, March 17, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- A group of US lawmakers from California are asking for a federal investigation into what role Goldman Sachs Group Inc. might have played in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

A letter Friday from 20 Democratic House members — led by Representative Adam Schiff — asks the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to include the New York-based investment bank in their preliminary investigations.

The request follows disclosures that Goldman Sachs served both as an adviser to the failed bank in late February and as the buyer of a $21 billion securities portfolio.

“Goldman Sachs stands to be paid more than $100 million for its role in a bond purchase that ultimately failed to save SVB from collapse,” the lawmakers said, citing an unconfirmed New York Times report. “As Goldman Sachs is poised to profit from SVB’s failure, we strongly urge you to analyze whether Goldman Sachs operated at ‘arm’s length’ in their role as adviser for SVB.”

A representative for Goldman Sachs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Silicon Valley Bank, in a disclosure Tuesday, said the sale was “at negotiated prices.”

--With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan.

Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank Has Chinese Startups Worried
March 17, 2023 
John Xie

Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th-largest American bank before it failed this month.

WASHINGTON —

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has caused panic not just in the U.S. tech industry but also in China, where the bank has been a key player for years among Chinese startups.

In recent days, many startups in China have issued statements to reassure their investors that their deposits with SVB will not impact their operations.

Before the bank failed and was taken over by U.S. regulators this month, Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th-largest American bank. In foreign markets, SVB’s reputation for financing about half of all U.S. venture-backed technology and health care companies made it a popular choice for companies, including those based in China and backed by U.S. venture capitalists.

BeiGene, one of China's largest biotech companies that specializes in the development of cancer drugs, said that the collapse of SVB would have “no major impact” on its operations, and that its uninsured cash deposits in Silicon Valley Bank totaled only $175 million, or about 3.9% of its cash and other investments.

Zai Lab, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Shanghai, issued a statement saying that SVB’s collapse would have no impact on its operations, including the ability to pay wages and make payments to third parties.

Other startups, including Andon Health, Sirnaomics, Everest Medicines and Jacobio Pharma, have issued similar statements.

After SVB failed, the Biden administration stepped in and ensured that all customers would be able to get their deposits back, even those who had more than $250,000 in their accounts. That’s the maximum amount that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation typically covers when a bank fails, but more than 90% of Silicon Valley Bank accounts were above that amount.

With their SVB deposits frozen, many companies could have been at risk of failing themselves, so the Biden administration said it would step in to guarantee they would get their funds back.

FDIC reimbursements for Chinese customers?

On Chinese social media, there has been concern that the reimbursements may apply only to customers in America.

"Is it true that only depositors who are U.S. citizens can get their money back? What about us?" asked one post on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

William Hanlon, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, told VOA Mandarin in an email that the FDIC as receiver “will not categorize account holders by nationality” and “will treat all depositors equally based on their status as depositors.”

David M. Bizar, another partner at Seyfarth Shaw, said the FDIC is continuing to operate SVB as a full-service bridge bank while it searches for buyers of the bank's assets.

“It can be expected that the United States will continue to maintain these deposit accounts and keep them from losing their value so long as it maintains them in its receivership, and that the FDIC as receiver will not sell these deposit accounts to purchasers who would be permitted under the sale agreements to reduce their values after the transfers,” he told VOA.

So far, several Chinese companies have publicly said they were able to withdraw all their deposits at SVB.

SVB’s role in China

The now-failed SVB carved out a unique role in the Chinese banking scene. It served roughly 2,200 clients and advised government regulators who were eager to build the country’s tech sector. The Santa Clara, California-based bank supported startup companies that not all banks, especially the big commercial ones in China, would accept because of higher risks.

In 2010, then-CEO Ken Wilcox brought the entire board of directors to China to showcase the importance he attached to the China market, according to Chinese media reports. In a 2019 interview, when he was SVB’s chief credit officer, he said SVB was “a model bank for China.”

SVB approached China in two different ways. One involved wholly owned operations in major tech centers, including Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, where it advised startups on how to manage overseas funding. The other involved a 50-50 joint-venture with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, also known as SPD Silicon Valley bank, that operates under a similar model as SVB.

Following the collapse of SVB, the Chinese policymakers signaled stricter oversight to improve financial market security.

The South China Morning Post quoted Liu Xiaochun, deputy director of the Shanghai Finance Institute, as saying it was inappropriate to set up a similar specialist bank in China.

He argued that to avoid potential losses in supporting tech and health startups, large commercial banks should establish branches to finance innovation, while managing risk exposure at headquarters.

SVB failure offers lesson for China - state media

Mar 15, 2023 

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, March 15 (Reuters) -The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will not impact China's financial system but offers an important lesson for the country's banking industry, the official Securities Times said in an editorial on Wednesday.

An SVB-style bank failure is unlikely to happen in China but the incident would have "important implications for the development of China's small- and medium-sized lenders, and the stability of China's financial system," the editorial said.

SVB's shutdown on Friday has roiled global markets, forced U.S. President Joe Biden to rush out assurances that the financial system is safe and prompted emergency U.S. measures giving banks access to more funding.

In China, shares of smaller lenders including Bank of Lanzhou 001227.SZ, Xi An Bank 600928.SS and Xiamen Bank 601187.SS have far underperformed big banks over the past week, amid concerns over their ability to manage risks.

China's smaller banks, more vulnerable to interest rate risks, could suffer from shrinking interest spreads and investment losses during a rate hike cycle, GF Securities said in a report this week.

The Securities Times said that while the SVB incident reflects loosened regulation of such banks in the U.S., a slew of financial regulatory reforms in China over the past years have cleaned up the industry, curbed shadow banking and reduced financial risks.

In addition, China has been closing regulatory loopholes, the editorial said. In the latest move, China said last week it would set up a new national financial regulatory body consolidating oversight of the industry.

"Although the SVB incident won't have material impact on China's finiancial markets, China's financial industry still needs to earnestly learn from this lesson, and always prioritise risk prevention and control," the newspaper said.

SVB's SIVB.O China joint venture has also sought to ease fears among clients and investors, saying on Saturday it has a sound corporate structure and an independently operated balance sheet.