Music containing AI-generated elements could win a Grammy as long as a human contributes in 'a meaningful way,' Recording Academy CEO says


Dominick Reuter
Tue, July 4, 2023 

"As long as the human is contributing in a more than de minimis amount, which to us means a meaningful way, they are and will always be considered for a nomination or a win," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr told the AP.

GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty

Music containing AI-generated elements is eligible to win a Grammy, the Recording Academy CEO said.


While the award will only be given to "human creators," those artists can use AI in their work.


New rules last month prohibit work that contains "no human authorship."

In order to win a Grammy, you need a great song, excellent distribution — and a pulse.

New rules announced last month by the Recording Academy specify that the music industry's highest award is for "only human creators," and flatly rejected any works that contain "no human authorship."

But that doesn't mean a human can't use AI to create an award-worthy single or album, so long as they're careful about crediting their respective contributions, Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said in an interview with the Associated Press.

"Music that contains AI-created elements is absolutely eligible for entry and for consideration for Grammy nomination. Period," Mason said. "What's not going to happen is we are not going to give a Grammy or Grammy nomination to the AI portion."

Like most awards, the Grammys recognize the various creative contributions that go into making great music within and across genres — songwriting, composition, production, and performance.

In other words, if a singer performs words written by AI, they won't get credit for songwriting. If the AI does the performing, the human might be credited as a producer.

"As long as the human is contributing in a more than de minimis amount, which to us means a meaningful way, they are and will always be considered for a nomination or a win," Mason said. "We don't want to see technology replace human creativity. We want to make sure technology is enhancing, embellishing, or additive to human creativity."

The news comes on the heels of guidance from a consortium of 24 leading colleges in the UK, including Oxford and Cambridge, that permits students and staff to use generative AI in their academic work, so long as they use it ethically.

Mason said the process for determining the rules for this award cycle took about six months to really nail down, and that he expects more than a few entries to include AI elements.

"We'll see if some of them get nominated or not, but I'm sure there'll be some that will be submitted," he said.

The CEO of the company behind AI chatbot ChatGPT says the worst-case scenario for artificial intelligence is 'lights out for all of us'

Sarah Jackson
Tue, July 4, 2023 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said he thinks artificial intelligence at its best could have "unbelievably good" effects, or at its worst mean "lights out for all of us."

Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch

Chances are, you've heard of ChatGPT, the viral AI chatbot sweeping the internet.


Some say it helps with work. Others fear ChatGPT can create problems like misinformation or scams.


The CEO of ChatGPT's maker said AI could be "unbelievably good" or make it "lights out for all."

ChatGPT has been making the rounds online, and as with any type of artificial intelligence, it's raising questions about its benefits — and how it could be abused.

In a January interview, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, offered his take on the pros and cons of artificial intelligence.

In the interview, StrictlyVC's Connie Loizos asked Altman what he viewed as the best- and worst-case scenarios for AI.

As for the best, "I think the best case is so unbelievably good that it's hard for me to even imagine," he said.

He added: "I can sort of imagine what it's like when we have just, like, unbelievable abundance and systems that can help us resolve deadlocks and improve all aspects of reality and let us all live our best lives. But I can't quite. I think the good case is just so unbelievably good that you sound like a really crazy person to start talking about it."

His thoughts on the worst-case scenario, though, were pretty bleak.

"The bad case — and I think this is important to say — is, like, lights out for all of us," Altman said. "I'm more worried about an accidental misuse case in the short term."

He added: "So I think it's like impossible to overstate the importance of AI safety and alignment work. I would like to see much, much more happening."

Experts have said ChatGPT could be abused for purposes like carrying out scams, conducting cyberattacks, spreading misinformation, and enabling plagiarism.

In more recent interviews, Altman has said he understands why some people are concerned about AI.

"I think it's weird when people think it's like a big dunk that I say, I'm a little bit afraid," Altman said on tech researcher Lex Fridman's podcast in March. "And I think it'd be crazy not to be a little bit afraid, and I empathize with people who are a lot afraid."

In June, he told Satyan Gajwani, the vice chairman of Times Internet, "What I lose the most sleep over is the hypothetical idea that we already have done something really bad by launching ChatGPT."

At the same time, Altman has said he believes the development of AI will spell the "most tremendous leap forward" for people's quality of life, but "regulation will be critical."

Brazil’s Lula Vows to Grow Mercosur Amid Uruguay Flak, Argentina Crisis

Martha Beck
Tue, July 4, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s plans to strengthen and expand the Mercosur trading bloc are running into growing disagreement among its members over several topics, including Venezuela and free trade agreements with other markets.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva assumed the rotating presidency of the South American customs union Tuesday, promising to reduce dissent in the group founded by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. His push for Mercosur to resume talks with Venezuela, suspended from the bloc in 2017 for breaching its democratic clauses, faced immediate backlash.

Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou and Paraguay’s Mario Abdo Benitez criticized the Venezuelan government’s decision to bar opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from running in upcoming presidential elections, putting Lula on the defensive.

“I follow the events in Venezuela with great concern,” Benitez said during a Mercosur summit in the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazu. “Erasing the opposition with the disqualification of Maria Corina Machado collides with human rights.”

Lacalle Pou echoed him: “It is clear that Venezuela will not have a healthy democracy if, when there is an election possibility, a candidate like Maria Corina Machado, who has enormous potential, is disqualified for political reasons.”

Lula, a longtime ally of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, said he still didn’t have a full picture of Machado’s situation in Venezuela, but called on his colleagues to remain open to dialogue: “When we have problems, we don’t hide from them, we face them,” he said.

Argentina’s Alberto Fernandez also adopted a more diplomatic tone, saying he wants “democracy to be full and institutionality to be maintained in Venezuela,” but that he first needs to “see exactly what the size of the problem” is in the country.

Machado’s ban, like those slapped on other leading opposition figures including former governor and twice presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, is an attempt by the Maduro administration to keep her out of next year’s race. In practice, however, she and other candidates are ignoring the bans and continuing their campaigns, betting the government will eventually be forced to reverse its decision.

EU-Mercosur Deal

Lula also said he seeks to include Bolivia in the while working for the conclusion this year of a long-awaited free trade deal with the European Union, which was reached in 2019 but has never been finalized.

Earlier, Lacalle Pou complained about Mercosur’s inability to strike trade deals with other markets, especially the European Union, while it blocks his country’s plan to sign a bilateral agreement with China.

“Uruguay has struggled to get market access as our economy’s share of Mercosur trade has decreased,” he said. “We must keep negotiating as a bloc and, if not as a bloc, unilaterally.”

Accessing the Argentine consumer market is among the main complaints voiced by Uruguay, as the second-largest economy in South America raises obstacles to imports in a bid to protect its dwindling international reserves.

Uruguay did not sign onto the statement released by the bloc of countries at the end of the summit, the fourth time it has left its name off the declaration.

“We’re going to have to make a huge effort to try to reduce complaints among us,” Lula said. “If it lasts a long time, a complaint becomes bitter, unpleasant. I will try to resolve the main disagreements in Mercosur, as together we are stronger and we have more negotiating power.”

The pain is just starting for commercial real estate - and plunging prices could reignite the banking crisis and choke the US economy, Columbia professor says



Theron Mohamed
Tue, July 4, 2023 


A Columbia professor has issued a bleak outlook for commercial real estate in the US.

Office values are plunging and threaten to cause an "urban doom loop," Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh said.

The sector's challenges could spill into the banking sector and hurt the wider economy, he said.

The pain is just beginning for commercial real estate (CRE), and the fallout could hit the banking sector and wider US economy, a leading academic has warned.

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a real estate and finance professor at Columbia Business School, sounded the alarm on an "urban doom loop" for CRE in a recent RealVision interview.

He explained that soaring interest rates and the shift to remote working have slashed the value of office space in cities. He expects that to translate into lower property-tax revenues, and the budget shortfall to force urban authorities to raise taxes or spend less on education, transportation, sanitation, and other public services. If cities become more expensive and less appealing, people are likely to move out, cutting real estate values even more and causing a downward spiral, he said.

"We are in the early phases of this doom loop," Van Nieuwerburgh said, noting his calculations suggest that property values have further to fall.

The professor pointed to data indicating that office usage, lease revenues, and the number of new leases being signed remain well below pre-pandemic levels. Vacancy rates have also surged to their highest level in about four decades, he noted.

"We haven't seen a crash like this since at least the early 1980s," he said, adding that lower-quality offices could drop in value by as much as 45% over time, and the overall office sector is set to suffer a $500 billion decline in value.

Van Nieuwerburgh emphasized that many Americans are exposed to that slump. Pension funds, real estate investment trusts (REITS), and other entities have invested significant sums in CRE, and the office segment specifically.

He also underscored that regional banks are key sources of financing for CRE, meaning they could run into the same kinds of problems that toppled Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this year.

"I do worry that there is potential for a spillover here, that we haven't seen the end of the banking crisis yet," Van Nieuwerburgh said. He cautioned that if smaller banks suffer losses in their CRE portfolios, they might pull back on lending to small businesses, which could crimp economic growth.

"The worst case scenario is a pretty bad event," he said. "The most likely scenario is one of slow burn, the train wreck in slow motion, where banks will have to provision for several years, or will have to take losses for several years."

"It's not going to be supportive for the economy, we will have a modest credit crunch," he added. "That's the best-case scenario."

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Over half a million silver coins just vanished – now the metals dealer behind the 'fraudulent' scheme must pay $146 million


Joseph Wilkins
Tue, July 4, 2023 

A Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.Wikimedia

A precious metals dealer has been asked to pay up $146 million in damages after over half a million silver coins went missing.


Robert Higgins ran a "fraudulent and deceptive scheme" linked to the purchase and sale of precious metals, the CFTC said.


From 2014 to 2022, Higgins led a 'fraudulent silver leasing program' that took deposits from almost 200 customers.

It's a plot that wouldn't look out of place in the Ocean's trilogy.

The vault where precious metals dealer Robert Higgins claimed to be storing over half a million of his clients' silver coins was found by investigators to be empty – except for little boxes of paper IOUs.

Now, the 68-year old has been ordered by a Delaware court to pay $146 million in damages as punishment for leading an elaborate scam that misappropriated almost $115 million of his customers' money over a period of eight years, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said in a statement.

From 2014 to 2022, Higgins convinced almost 200 unsuspecting investors to buy and store their American Eagle Silver coins through his two companies, Argent Asset Group LLC and First State Depository Company LLC, according to the CFTC.

The coins are made of 99.9% silver and minted by the US Treasury – making them a popular alternative investment among Americans. But clients who bought coins through Higgins's firms may not have owned any at all – as it remains unclear whether they ever existed in the first place.

Furthermore, First State Depository distributed false monthly account statements to customers, according to court filings.

Higgins ran a "fraudulent and deceptive scheme", and was ordered to pay $113 million to clients and $33 million in penalties, according to the CFTC. His two companies must cease trading and he is banned from the industry for life.

The precious metals industry has seen a series of scams in recent times. In March, the London Metal Exchange was rocked when investigators found bags of stones in a Rotterdam warehouse, instead of the nickel that underpinned some of the bourse's contracts.

Just a few weeks before that, Trafigura, a trading house based out of Singapore, accused metals tycoon Prateek Gupta of faking $500 million of nickel shipping cargoes.

North Korean satellite wasn’t advanced enough to conduct reconnaissance from space, Seoul says


Tue, July 4, 2023 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The satellite North Korea failed to put into orbit wasn't advanced enough to conduct military reconnaissance from space as it claimed, South Korea's military said Wednesday after retrieving and studying the wreckage.

North Korea had tried to launch its first spy satellite in late May, but the long-range rocket carrying it plunged into the waters off the Korean Peninsula's west coast soon after liftoff. The satellite was to be part of a space-based reconnaissance system North Korea says it needs to counter escalating security threats from South Korea and the United States.

South Korea mobilized navy ships, aircraft and divers to recover debris from the rocket and satellite in a 36-day operation that ended Wednesday, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

"Numerous” and “key” parts of the rocket and the satellite were recovered and the South Korean and U.S. experts who jointly examined them concluded the satellite wasn't capable of conducting military reconnaissance works at all, the statement said.

North Korea didn’t immediately respond to the South Korean announcement.

The day the launch failed, North Korea's state media said the rocket lost thrust following the separation of its first and second stages, then crashed into the sea. At a ruling party meeting last month, North Korea called the failed launch “the most serious” shortcoming this year and harshly criticized those responsible.

Top North Korean officials have repeatedly vowed to attempt a second launch after learning what went wrong with the failed launch.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said acquiring a military spy satellite is crucial to beef up his country’s defense capability. He’s said North Korea also needs to introduce other high-tech weapons systems such as multi-warhead nuclear missiles, solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-powered submarines.

Months before its failed satellite launch, North Korea launched a test satellite and publicized photos showing South Korean cities as viewed from space. Some civilian experts said at the time the photos were too crude for a surveillance purpose and that they were likely capable of only recognizing big targets like warships at sea or military installations on the ground.

North Korea had responded to that skepticism by saying there was no reason to use a sophisticated camera for one test.

The U.S., South Korea and others denounced North Korea's rocket launch as a security risk and a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the country's use of ballistic missile technology. But further sanctions are unlikely since permanent council members Russia and China oppose new action.

Hyung-jin Kim, The Associated Press

BNY Mellon Asset-Management Unit Piles Most Cash Since Internet Bubble Burst


Tania Chen and Iris Ouyang
Tue, July 4, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- Bank of New York Mellon’s asset management arm has built up its biggest cash buffer since the bursting of the Internet bubble, out of concern that Federal Reserve interest rate hikes still have the potential to upend markets.

Investors are underestimating how high rates will have to go to curb inflation, sending the US and Europe into recession as early as the second half of the year, according to BNY Mellon Investment Management’s Aninda Mitra. The firm’s head of Asia macro and investment strategy drew a comparison between the environment today and the dotcom crisis at the beginning of the millennium, at an outlook briefing in Hong Kong.

“During the dotcom crash, a lot of equities looked very overvalued and the Fed was hiking rates as well,” Mitra said. “That was the time when we were probably last actively recommending keeping some powder dry.”

With tight monetary policy being re-priced higher for longer, the $1.9 trillion money manager has set its cash and Treasuries levels at “highest conviction” overweight.

Investors continue to mull the consequences of central bank rate hikes on the global economy, with some raising the prospect of policy error from too much tightening. But while the bond market shows some signs of concern, risk assets like technology stocks continue to push higher, with the Nasdaq 100 Index recently notching its best ever first-half of a year.

Still, BNY will look to put its cash pile to good use, should a decline in risk assets create buying opportunities.

Equity valuations look “vulnerable” but could become attractive in the first or second quarter next year after markets have meaningfully sold off in a recession, Mitra said. The firm is also eyeing so-called fallen angels — once investment-grade debt downgraded to high yield status.

“Inflation won’t go back to 2% until 2025,” Mitra said. “Learn to embrace cash.”

Trafigura-Led Group to Invest $555 Million in Angola Railway

Candido Mendes
Tue, July 4, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- A group of investors led by commodity trader Trafigura Group plans to invest as much as $555 million in a railway project that will link the Angolan port of Lobito to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

The consortium, known as Lobito Atlantic Railways, will spend $455 million on the so-called Lobito Corridor — a 1,344 kilometer-long trade route - as well as up to $100 million on a 400-kilometer railway line in Congo, Angolan Transport Minister Ricardo Viegas d’Abreu said Tuesday in a statement. The group of investors includes Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil Engenharia e Construcao Africa and Vecturis SA, a Brussels-based private railway operator.

Lobito Atlantic has been granted a 30-year concession to operate the Lobito Corridor, with the possibility of it being extended to 50 years if the railway is expanded into Zambia, Viegas d’Abreu said. The US has pledged to help finance the project, Angolan President Joao Lourenco said in the statement.

Using the so-called Caminho-de-Ferro de Benguela railway will provide faster trade routes to Europe and the Americas from the copper and cobalt-rich areas of Congo and Zambia, according to the statement.

“The full operationalization of this corridor will ultimately allow the opening up of mines in Zambia and the DRC, as well as access to and circulation of inputs essential to both the mining and agricultural industries,” Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said in a separate statement sent to reporters Tuesday.

--With assistance from Michael J. Kavanagh.

Tesla's top China rival is exploring a faster method for lithium mining in Latin America — and offering free patents to build the industry

Phil Rosen
Wed, July 5, 2023 


The BYD Han.

Richard Bord/Getty Images

Tesla rival BYD is exploring a new method of lithium mining in Chile, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.


The Chinese firm aims to use a more direct way to extract lithium from Chilean salt flats.


A BYD exec said the company plans to offer local patents and build up the industry in Chile.

Tesla's biggest Chinese rival BYD is looking to secure more lithium, a key battery material, by using a faster extraction method in northern Chile, Bloomberg reports.

BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li said in an interview Tuesday the company is holding talks with officials in Chile, a nation with huge lithium reserves, as well as companies in the lithium battery industry like SQM to explore new extraction technologies that would tap directly into Chilean salt flats, rather than the current technique of pumping brine and housing it in evaporation pods.

The goal would be for the company to establish in Chile the same direct lithium extraction, or DLE, method used in China, Li said. At the same time, BYD would be able to uplift the local commodity sector.

"BYD is ready to bring advanced DLE technology to Chile, and also we will develop R&D patents locally and offer free patents to the Chilean government to help Chile build up this industry," Li told Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence suggests the electric vehicle boom is going to squeeze lithium reserves in the coming years. It's possible, per the report, that more than $514 billion of funding will be necessary to meet the demand by 2030.

Lithium, while coveted in the EV business, leaves negative repercussions in locations where it's mined. There's a lot of land, water, and chemicals involved in extracting lithium, and it leaves waste in its wake.

In any case, BYD is coming off a record quarter, selling 700,244 cars, about half of which were all-electric.

In the same three month stretch, Elon Musk's Tesla delivered 466,140 vehicles, beating expectations and pushing its share price higher.

Still, Tesla's record-setting quarter and subsequent cheers from Wall Street masked a key stat: The company made more cars than it delivered for the fifth straight quarter.

That means Musk has his work cut out for him as far as finding new ways to boost demand, or else his company's inventory could keep ballooning and margins may shrink.

It's worth noting, too, that competition across the auto industry continues to heat up, with the likes of Tesla and BYD pitted against the long-standing demand for traditional gas-powered cars.

The two company's record delivery figures suggest that plenty of consumers do indeed want to go electric, but for Tesla in particular to resolve its production and delivery disparity, analysts say more price cuts could loom.

IMPERIALISM IS STATE CAPITALI$M
A troubled new power plant leaves Jordan in debt to China, raising concerns over Beijing's influence

The Canadian Press
Wed, July 5, 2023 


ATTARAT, Jordan (AP) — Jordan’s Attarat power plant was envisioned as a landmark project promising to provide the desert kingdom with a major source of energy while solidifying its relations with China.

But weeks after its official opening, the site, a sea of black, crumbly rock in the barren desert south of Jordan’s capital, is instead a source of heated controversy. Deals surrounding the plant put Jordan on the hook for billions of dollars in debt to China — all for a plant that is no longer needed for its energy, because of other agreements made since the project’s conception.

The result is fueling tensions between China and Jordan and causing grief for the Jordanian government as it tries to contest the deal in an international legal battle. As Chinese influence grows in the Middle East and America withdraws, the $2.1 billion shale oil station has come to characterize China’s wider model that has burdened many Asian and African states with crippling debt and served as a cautionary tale for the region.

“Attarat is a representation of what the Belt and Road Initiative was and has become,” said Jesse Marks, a nonresident fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center, referring to China’s scheme to build global infrastructure and boost Beijing’s political sway.

“Jordan evolves as an interesting case study not for China’s success in the region but for how China engages in middle-income countries,” he said.

First conceived some 15 years ago as a way to fulfill national ambitions of energy independence, the Attarat shale oil plant is now causing anger in Jordan because of its enormous price tag. If the original agreement holds, Jordan would have to pay China a staggering $8.4 billion over 30 years to buy the electricity generated by the plant.

Laborers flown from rural China toil in the shadow of the giant station, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Amman.

When Shi Changqing arrived in the Jordanian desert earlier this year from the Jilin province in China’s northeast, fears were mounting in the workers’ dormitories that the project could grind to a halt, leaving everyone in the lurch, the 36-year-old welder said.

“It’s very strange to feel that, being from China, you are not wanted here,” he said.

With its meager natural resources in a region awash with oil and gas, Jordan seemed to have drawn a losing ticket. Then in the 2000s, it struck shale oil trapped in the black rock that underlies the country. With the fourth-largest concentration of shale oil in the world, Jordan had high hopes for a big pay-off.

In 2012, the Jordanian Attarat Power Company proposed to the government to extract shale oil from the desert and build a plant using it to provide 15% of the country’s electricity supply. The proposal fit the government’s intensifying desire for energy self-sufficiency amid the turmoil of the 2011 Arab uprisings, company officials say.

But extraction proved expensive, risky and technologically challenging. As the project lagged, Jordan struck a $15 billion agreement to import vast amounts of natural gas at competitive prices from Israel in 2014. Interest in Attarat waned.

Attarat Power Co. CEO Mohammed Maaitah said he pitched the project the world over — from the United States and Europe to Japan and South Korea. No one bit, he said.

To Jordan’s surprise, Chinese banks offered Jordan over $1.6 billion in loans to finance the plant in 2017. A Chinese state-owned firm, Guangdong Energy Group, bought a 45% stake in the Attarat Power Co., turning the white elephant into the largest private enterprise to come out of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative outside China, according to the company.

Guangdong Energy Group did not respond to requests for comment.

The investment was part of China’s wider push into an Arab world hungry for foreign investment, experts say. The money for large infrastructure projects came with few political strings attached.

“China doesn’t bring with it the baggage of the United States in that we actually have some concern about democratic processes, transparency, corruption,” said David Schenker, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Middle East policy. “For authoritarian states, there’s some appeal in China.”

As talk grew of American unreliability, China turned to acquiring strategic assets in the Middle East, even in economically troubled states. It bought lots of Iraqi oil, tendered a port in northern Lebanon and poured money into President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s new capital in Egypt.

With Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017 gaining the upper hand in his country’s civil war, China had an interest in investing in the Attarat project in neighboring Jordan as a springboard, anticipating a Syrian reconstruction boom that could unlock billions of dollars in investments, experts say.

Under their 30-year power purchase deal, Jordan’s state-run electricity company will have to buy electricity from the now effectively Chinese-led Attarat at an exorbitant rate that means the Jordanian government would lose $280 million annually, the treasury estimated. To cover the payments, Jordan would have to raise electricity prices for consumers by 17%, energy experts said — a severe blow to an economy already saddled with debt and inflation.

The extent of losses to China appalled the Jordanian government. Jordan’s Ministry of Energy launched international arbitration against Attarat Power Co. in 2020 “on the grounds of gross unfairness.”

When asked why Jordan had agreed to such a lopsided contract to begin with, Jordan’s Ministry of Energy declined to comment, as did the National Electricity Co. As of June, hearings were being held at an arbitration tribunal of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce.

Musa Hantash, a geologist on the parliamentary energy committee, described the deal as the natural outcome of corruption and a lack of technical expertise.

“It’s very difficult to convince these big companies to invest in Jordan. There are things to help certain people make a profit,” he said, without elaborating.

American officials portrayed the Attarat contract as a case of Beijing’s “ debt trap diplomacy.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the Attarat project. But it defended Beijing’s investment in developing countries, denying allegations it ensnares partners in debt and arguing that China never compels “others to borrow from us forcibly.”

“We never attach any political strings to loan agreements,” the ministry said, urging international financial institutions to help provide debt relief.

Attarat Power said it expects a decision in the case later this year. Rulings by the world business organization are legally binding and enforceable.

Maaitah and other company officials dismissed Jordan’s claims of unjustly inflated prices, accusing Jordan of backtracking on its agreement due to anti-China sentiment.

Since the first of two power units went live last fall, the Jordanian government has paid only half its monthly dues, Maaitah said.

In Jordan and other poorer Arab states allied with the U.S., the pace of Chinese investment in recent years has slowed.

Faced with pushback abroad and rising concerns at home, China is shifting its approach in the region, said Amman-based China expert Samer Khraino, focusing on the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Wealthy states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have no issue paying back China’s big loans.

For now, Jordan appears unwilling to take any more chances with China.

In May, Jordan’s telecommunications company Orange signed a new agreement for 5G equipment. It had long been a customer of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant under American sanctions.

This time, it chose Nokia.

Isabel Debre, The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CYBER CAPITALI$M
Ransomware criminals are dumping kids' private files online after school hacks

The Canadian Press
Wed, July 5, 2023 



The confidential documents stolen from schools and dumped online by ransomware gangs are raw, intimate and graphic. They describe student sexual assaults, psychiatric hospitalizations, abusive parents, truancy — even suicide attempts.

“Please do something,” begged a student in one leaked file, recalling the trauma of continually bumping into an ex-abuser at a school in Minneapolis. Other victims talked about wetting the bed or crying themselves to sleep.

Complete sexual assault case folios containing these details were among more than 300,000 files dumped online in March after the 36,000-student Minneapolis Public Schools refused to pay a $1 million ransom. Other exposed data included medical records and discrimination complaints.

Rich in digitized data, the nation’s schools are prime targets for far-flung criminal hackers, who are assiduously locating and scooping up sensitive files.

Often strapped for cash, districts are grossly ill-equipped not just to defend themselves but to respond diligently and transparently when attacked, especially as they struggle to help kids catch up from the pandemic and grapple with shrinking budgets.

Months after the Minneapolis attack, administrators have not delivered on their promise to inform individual victims. Unlike for hospitals, no federal law exists to require this notification from schools.

The Associated Press reached families of six students whose sexual assault case files were exposed. The message from a reporter was the first time anyone had alerted them.

“Truth is, they didn’t notify us about anything,” said a mother whose son’s case file has 80 documents.

Even when schools catch a ransomware attack in progress, the data are typically already gone. That was what Los Angeles Unified School District did last Labor Day weekend, only to see the private paperwork of more than 1,900 former students — including psychological evaluations and medical records — leaked online. Not until February did district officials disclose the breach’s full dimensions.

The lasting legacy of school ransomware attacks, it turns out, is not in school closures, recovery costs or even soaring cyberinsurance premiums. It is the trauma for staff, students and parents from the online exposure of private records — which the AP found on the open internet and dark web.

“A massive amount of information is being posted online, and nobody is looking to see just how bad it all is. Or, if somebody is looking, they’re not making the results public,” said analyst Brett Callow of the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.

Other big districts recently stung by data theft include San Diego, Des Moines and Tucson, Arizona. While the severity of those hacks remains unclear, all have been criticized either for being slow to admit to being hit by ransomware, dragging their feet on notifying victims — or both.

ON CYBER SECURITY, SCHOOLS HAVE LAGGED

While other ransomware targets have fortified and segmented networks, encrypting data and mandating multi-factor authentication, school systems have been slower to react.

Ransomware likely has affected well over 5 million U.S. students by now, with district attacks on track to rise this year, said analyst Allan Liska of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Nearly one in three U.S. districts had been breached by the end of 2021, according to a survey by the Center for Internet Security, a federally funded nonprofit.

Just three years ago, criminals did not routinely grab data in ransomware attacks, said TJ Sayers, cyberthreat intelligence manager at the Center for Internet Security. Now, it’s common, he said, with much of it sold on the dark web.

The criminals in the Minneapolis theft were especially aggressive. They shared links to the stolen data on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram and the dark web, which standard browsers can’t access.

The Minneapolis parents informed by the AP of the leaked sexual assault complaints feel doubly victimized. Their children have battled PTSD, and some even left their schools. Now this.

“The family is beyond horrified to learn that this highly sensitive information is now available in perpetuity on the internet for the child’s future friends, romantic interests, employers, and others to discover,” said Jeff Storms, an attorney for one of the families. It is AP policy not to identify sexual abuse victims.

Minneapolis Schools spokeswoman Crystina Lugo-Beach would not say how many people have been contacted so far or answer other AP questions about the attack.

Despite parents' and teachers' frustration, schools are routinely advised by incident response teams concerned about legal liability issues and ransom negotiations against being more transparent, said Callow of Emsisoft. Minneapolis school officials apparently followed that playbook, initially describing the Feb. 17 attack cryptically as a “system incident,” then as “technical difficulties” and later an “encryption event.”

The extent of the breach became clear though when a ransomware group posted video of stolen data, giving the district 10 days to pay the ransom before leaking files.

The district declined to pay, following the standing advice of the FBI, which says ransoms encourage criminals to target more victims.

SCHOOLS SPEND TECH BUDGETS ON LEARNING TOOLS, NOT SECURITY

During the COVID-19 pandemic, districts prioritized spending on internet connectivity and remote learning. Security got short shrift as IT departments invested in software to track student engagement and performance, often at the expense of privacy and safety, University of Chicago and New York University researchers found.

Cybersecurity money for public schools is limited. As it stands, districts can only expect slivers of the $1 billion in cybersecurity grants that the federal government is distributing over four years.

Minnesota’s chief information security officer, John Israel, said his state got $18 million of it this year to divvy among 3,600 different entities. State lawmakers provided an additional $22.5 million in grants for cyber and physical security in schools.

It’s already too late for the mother of one of the Minneapolis students whose confidential sexual assault complaint was released online. She almost feels “violated again.”

“All the stuff we kept private,” she said, “it’s out there. And it’s been out there for a very long time.”

Frank Bajak, Heather Hollingsworth And Larry Fenn, The Associated Press