ARM YOURSELVES

Several churchgoers are dead in Haiti after deciding to march against a dangerous gang

Jacqueline Charles
Sat, August 26, 2023 

CARL JUSTE/Miami Herald File

Several worshipers in Haiti were shot and killed Saturday when their decision to fight back against an armed gang took a deadly turn.

The individuals were among hundreds of church faithful who marched on a gang controlling the expansive post-earthquake settlement of Canaan located at the edge of Port-au-Prince. Dressed in yellow T-shirts and led by their pastor, Marcorel “Marco” Zidor, they set out against the gang and their leader “Jeff” with nothing more than machetes and sticks in their hands.

Later, images shared on social media showed the group being shot at and their bloodied bodies on the ground. Another video circulated of three captured marchers on their knees being interviewed supposedly by one of the gang members about their march.

A spokesperson for the Haiti National Police did not immediately respond to questions from the Miami Herald about the incident and reports that police had accompanied the march part of the way.

Pierre Esperance of the National Human Rights Defense Network, Marie Yolène Gilles of the Eyes Wide Open Foundation and Gédéon Jean of the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, all confirmed that marchers were killed and others were injured. While Esperance and Gilles, who had been following the march through live footage on Facebook, said they did not yet have a tally on casualties, Jean said at least seven people died during the mayhem when heavily armed gang members opened fire on the group.

“There are several who are injured and others who are missing,” he said. The fate of “Pastor Marco,” Jean said, remained unknown.

He and his fellow human rights defenders criticized the comportment of the Haitian national police, which they said allowed the churchgoers to carry out a demonstration against a gang notorious for carrying out massacres and just last week warned of its intentions to shut down the last remaining open road connecting the capital to the northern regions of the country.

“You grab machetes to go attack an armed gang? The police should have blocked them,” said Jean, who also took issue with the pastor’s “irresponsible” act.

Still, he noted that the ongoing escalation in gang violence, which has turned Port-au-Prince into a war zone in recent weeks, has led to widespread desperation among Haitians.

Pasteur Marco mete tèt li sou kanaran nan moman Map pale la avèk tout fidèl li yo pou yal bay nèg ak zam yo bwa kale nou poko konnen koman sa pral pase rete Branche pic.twitter.com/ZTX7sZhsg2

— radio Independante fm (@independante_fm) August 26, 2023

Since April, Haitians have increasingly been taking justice into their own hands, launching a “self-defense” movement known as “Bwa Kale” where they’ve carried out lynchings against suspected gang members. The United Nations has said that at least 350 people, including 310 alleged gang members and a police officer, have been killed as part of the rise in vigilante justice across the country.

“The people are in a desperate situation and they are seeing if they can defend themselves,” Jean said. “They know the police cannot help them and all the international community is doing is holding meetings to discuss the problem but they are not giving the police the means to help.”

Haitians shelter in sports center as fresh attacks displace nearly 9,000

Jean Loobentz Cesar
Sat, August 26, 2023

People fleeing from gang violence, in Port-au-Prince

By Jean Loobentz Cesar

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Hundreds of people are crammed into small white tents in the courtyard of a sports center in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, drying clothes on the access ramps and washing their children in small, plastic tubs.

Some 8,730 people have been displaced around the heavily populated neighborhood of Carrefour-Feuilles, according to U.N. estimates on Saturday, more than half due to a fresh outbreak of violence two days earlier.

Residents began moving out of the area en masse from Aug. 12, when armed gangs mounted their attacks on the area.

Under-resourced police have struggled to fight off the armed groups which now control large parts of the capital, their turf wars driving a devastating humanitarian crisis that has displaced around 200,000 nationwide.

Ariel Henry, Haiti's unelected prime minister, called for urgent international security assistance last October.

Though countries were wary of backing Henry and repeating the serious abuses committed by past interventions, Kenyan delegates met with Henry and top police chiefs this week to assess leading such a force.

The motion is eventually expected to go to a U.N. Security Council vote.

"Even if order was restored to the area, I would not come back," said Orisca Marie Youseline, who grew up in Carrefour-Feuilles and is now one of some 930 people the U.N. estimates is sheltering at the Gymnasium Vincent sports center.

"We are running too much, we are tired of always being victims."

SEVERELY UNDER-EQUIPPED

Meanwhile outside the French Embassy, protected by high walls, caged security cameras and barbed wire, protesters set a tire on fire as people patrolled with machetes.

Many Haitians have joined civilian self-defense groups known as "Bwa Kale," a movement which has inspired hope but also sparked retaliation against civilians and stirred fears the groups are spurring on the violence.

After Thursday's escalation, thousands of people who had taken refuge at the Lycee Carrefour-Feuilles moved to other sites, including other schools and the square outside a cinema.

"These places are not made to handle the situation of displaced people," said Gedeon Jean, director at local rights group CARDH, which raised the alarm about the displaced residents -including people who are elderly, disabled, pregnant or with young children- going a week without aid.

Many families living in outdoor tents suffered from rains brought by Tropical Storm Franklin, now a hurricane.

Civil protection, social services and French NGO Medecins du Monde are helping supply the sites, Jean said, adding police were severely under-equipped and "the needs are huge."

"Even if this foreign force comes, when it leaves we will be in the same situation," said Youseline. "They will come for a few months, help us, push the gangs back, and when they leave we will be back here. I don't want to live like this anymore."

(Reporting by Jean Loobentz Cesar in Port-au-Prince and Sarah Morland in Mexico City; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

U.S. judge cancels hearing on Mexican suit against gun-makers, Mexico says

POSTPONES IS MORE LIKE IT

Reuters
Sat, August 26, 2023 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. judge cancels hearing on Mexican suit against gun-makers, Mexico says

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has canceled a hearing on a $10 billion lawsuit filed by Mexico seeking to hold U.S. gun manufacturers responsible for facilitating arms trafficking to drug cartels, Mexico's foreign ministry said on Saturday.

The ministry, which has been urging a U.S. appeals court to revive the case, said that the hearing, due to take place on Monday, had been canceled last Thursday.

"The judge assigned to the case, Cindy Jorgenson, issued an order canceling the hearing in which she only stated that she is considering excusing herself from hearing the present litigation," the ministry said.

The judge and U.S. court officials were not immediately available for comment.

Seven in 10 crime guns recovered and traced in Mexico come from the United States, according to U.S. gun control agency ATF. This level nears 80% across the Caribbean, where many countries have backed the Mexican lawsuit.

The Mexican and U.S. governments have recently agreed to boost controls against arms trafficking through an electronic tracking program for weapons seized from criminal groups, but neither has offered details on the plan.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; writing by Sarah Morland; editing by Robert Birsel)

THE GEOGRAPHY OF DAESH

UN experts say Islamic State group almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in under a year

EDITH M. LEDERER
Updated Sat, August 26, 2023 

A sign on the northern road exiting in Gao, Northern Mali, reads "welcome to the islamic state of Gao on Jan. 30, 2013. Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are also capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement, United Nations experts said in a new report.

(AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File) 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement, United Nations experts said in a new report.

The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said.

That’s the year when a military coup took place in the West African country and rebels in the north formed an Islamic state two months later. The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.

In August 2020, Mali’s president was overthrown in a coup that included an army colonel who carried out a second coup and was sworn in as president in June 2021. He developed ties to Russia’s military and Russia's Wagner mercenary group whose head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was reportedly killed in a plane crash on a flight from Moscow this week.

The 2015 peace agreement was signed by three parties: the government, a pro-government militia and a coalition of groups who seek autonomy in northern Mali.

The panel of experts said in the report circulated Friday that the impasse in implementing the agreement — especially the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of combatants into society — is empowering al-Qaida-linked Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, known as JNIM, to vie for leadership in northern Mali.

Sustained violence and attacks mostly by IS fighters in the Greater Sahara have also made the signatories to the peace deal “appear to be weak and unreliable security providers” for communities targeted by the extremists, the experts said.

JNIM is taking advantage of this weakening “and is now positioning itself as the sole actor capable of protecting populations against Islamic State in the Greater Sahara," they said.

The panel said Mali’s military rulers are watching the confrontation between the IS group and al-Qaida affiliate from a distance.

The experts cited some sources as saying the government believes that over time the confrontation in the north will benefit Malian authorities, but said other sources believe time favors the terrorists “whose military capacities and community penetration grow each day.”

“In less than a year, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara has almost doubled its areas of control in Mali,” the panel said, pointing to its control now of rural areas in eastern Menaka and large parts of the Ansongo area in northern Gao.

In June, Mali's junta ordered the U.N. peacekeeping force and its 15,000 international troops to leave after a decade of working on stemming the jihadi insurgency The Security Council terminated the mission’s mandate on June 30.

The panel said the armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement expressed concern that the peace deal could potentially fall apart without U.N. mediation, “thereby exposing the northern regions to the risk of another uprising.”

The U.N. force, known as MINUSMA, “played a crucial role” in facilitating talks between the parties, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the agreement, and investigating alleged violations, the panel said.

The 104-page report painted a grim picture of other turmoil and abuses in the country.

The panel said terrorist groups, armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement, and transnational organized crime rings are competing for control over trade and trafficking routes transiting through the northern regions of Gao and Kidal.

“Mali remains a hotspot for drug trafficking in West Africa and between coastal countries in the Gulf of Guinea and North Africa, in both directions,” the experts said, adding that many of the main drug dealers are reported to be based in the capital Bamako.

The panel said it remains particularly concerned with persistent conflict-related sexual violence in the eastern Menaka and central Mopti regions, “especially those involving the foreign security partners of the Malian Armed Force” – the Wagner Group.

“The panel believes that violence against women, and other forms of grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law are being used, specifically by the foreign security partners, to spread terror among populations,” the report said.

UPDATE
Bare electrical wire and leaning poles on Maui were possible cause of deadly fires

JENNIFER McDERMOTT, BERNARD CONDON and MICHAEL BIESECKER
Updated Sat, August 26, 2023


Linemen work on poles Aug. 13, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii, following a deadly wildfire that caused heavy damage days earlier. When the winds of Hurricane Dora lashed Maui Aug. 8, they struck bare electrical lines the Hawaiian electric utility had left exposed to the elements. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows -- those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact.

Videos and images analyzed by The Associated Press confirmed those wires were among miles of line that Hawaiian Electric Co. left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them.

Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000, mostly wooden power poles, which its own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard,” were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan. They were nowhere close to meeting a 2002 national standard that key components of Hawaii’s electrical grid be able to withstand 105 mile per hour winds.

A 2019 filing said it had fallen behind in replacing the old wooden poles because of other priorities and warned of a “serious public hazard” if they “failed.”

Google street view images of poles taken before the fire show the bare wire.

It’s “very unlikely” a fully-insulated cable would have sparked and caused a fire in dry vegetation, said Michael Ahern, who retired this month as director of power systems at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

Experts who watched videos showing downed power lines agreed wire that was insulated would not have arced and sparked, igniting a line of flame.

Hawaiian Electric said in a statement that it has “long recognized the unique threats" from climate change and has spent millions of dollars in response, but did not say whether specific power lines that collapsed in the early moments of the fire were bare.

“We've been executing on a resilience strategy to meet these challenges, and since 2018, we have spent approximately $950 million to strengthen and harden our grid and approximately $110 million on vegetation management efforts,” the company said. “This work included replacing more than 12,500 poles and structures since 2018 and trimming and removing trees along approximately 2,500 line miles every year on average.”

But a former member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission confirmed many of Maui's wooden power poles were in poor condition. Jennifer Potter lives in Lahaina and until the end of last year was on the commission, which regulates Hawaiian Electric.

“Even tourists that drive around the island are like, ‘What is that?’ They’re leaning quite significantly because the winds over time literally just pushed them over,” she said. “That obviously is not going to withstand 60, 70 mile per hour winds. So the infrastructure was just not strong enough for this kind of windstorm … The infrastructure itself is just compromised.”

John Morgan, a personal injury and trial attorney in Florida who lives part-time in Maui noticed the same thing. “I could look at the power poles. They were skinny, bending, bowing. The power went out all the time.”

Morgan’s firm is suing Hawaiian Electric on behalf of one person and talking to many more about their rights. The fire came within 500 yards of house.

Sixty percent of the utility poles on West Maui were still down on Aug. 14, according to Hawaiian Electric CEO Shelee Kimura at a media conference — 450 of the 750 poles.

Hawaiian Electric is facing a spate of new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible for the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. The number of confirmed dead stands at 115, and the county expects that to rise.

Lawyers plan to inspect some electrical equipment from a neighborhood where the fire is thought to have originated as soon as next week, per a court order, but they will be doing that in a warehouse. The utility took down the burnt poles and removed fallen wires from the site.

This was a “preventable tragedy of epic proportions,” said attorney Paul Starita, lead counsel on three of the lawsuits.

“It all comes back to money,” said Starita, of the California firm Singleton Schreiber. “They might say, oh, well, it takes a long time to get the permitting process done or whatever. OK, start sooner. I mean, people’s lives are on the line. You’re responsible. Spend the money, do your job.”

Hawaiian Electric also faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple. Maui County sued Hawaiian Electric on Thursday over this issue.

Michael Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that with power lines causing so many fires in the United States: “We definitely have a new pattern, we just don’t have a new safety regime to go with it.”

Insulating an electrical wire prevents arcing and sparking, and dissipates heat.

Other utilities have been addressing the issue of bare wire. Pacific Gas & Electric was found responsible for the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California that killed 85 people. The disaster was caused by downed power lines.

Its program to eliminate uninsulated wire in fire zones has covered more than 1,200 miles of line so far.

PG&E also announced in 2021 it would bury 10,000 miles of electrical line. It buried 180 miles in 2022 and is on pace to do 350 miles this year.

Another major California utility, Southern California Edison, expects to have replaced more than 7,200 miles, or about 75% of its overhead distribution lines, with covered wire in high fire risk areas by the end of 2025. It, too, is burying line in areas at severe risk.

Hawaiian Electric said in a filing last year that it had looked to the wildfire plans of utilities in California.

Some don’t fault Hawaiian Electric for its comparative lack of action because it has not faced the threat of wildfires for as long. And the utility is not at all alone in continuing to use bare metal conductors high up on power poles.

The same is true for public safety power shutoffs. It's been only a few years that utilities have been willing to preemptively shut off people's power to prevent fire and the disruptive practice is not yet widespread.

But Mark Toney called wildfires caused by utilities absolutely preventable. He is executive director of the ratepayer group The Utility Reform Network in California. It is pushing PG&E to insulate its lines in high-risk areas.

“We have to stop utility-caused wildfires. We have to stop them and the quickest, cheapest way to do it is to insulate the overhead lines,” he said.

As for the poles, in a 2019 Hawaiian Electric regulatory document, the company said its 60,000 poles, nearly all wood, were vulnerable because they were already old and Hawaii is in a “severe wood decay hazard zone.” The company said it had fallen behind in replacing wood poles because of other priorities and warned of a “serious public hazard” if the poles “failed.”

The document said many of the company’s poles were built to withstand 56 mph (90 kph), when a Category 1 Hurricane has winds of at least 74 mph.

In 2002, the National Electric Safety Code was updated to require utility poles like those on Maui to withstand 105 mile per hour winds.

The U.S. electrical grid was designed and built for last century’s climate, said Joshua Rhodes, an energy systems research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Utilities would be smart to better prepare for protracted droughts and high winds, he added.

“Everyone considers Hawaii to be a tropical paradise, but it got dry and it burned,” he said Thursday. “It may look expensive if you’re doing work to stave off starting wildfires or the impact of wildfires, but it’s much cheaper than actually starting one and burning down so many people’s homes and causing so many people’s deaths.”

Tony Takitani, an attorney born and raised on Maui, is working with Morgan on the litigation.

Takitani said in his 68 years there, it’s getting drier and drier. He said what happened on the island is so horrific it’s hard to talk about. But he does think it will force improvements to the grid.

“When the poles go down, it’s kindling,” he said. “The combination of what’s going on with our Earth and people not being properly prepared for it, I think caused this. From living here, from the videos I’ve seen of poles going down and fires igniting, it seems kind of obvious.”

ETHIOPIAN IMPERIALISM

Head of Ethiopia's crisis-hit Amhara region resigns

NOT A NATION A CONFEDERATION

AFP
Fri, August 25, 2023 

Map of Ethiopia locating Amhara region and the town of Finote Selam. 

(Kun TIAN)

The head of Ethiopia's violence-stricken region of Amhara, which the federal government has placed under a state of emergency, has stepped down, according to an official statement reported Friday.

Amhara's parliament "has accepted the resignation submitted by the regional president, Dr. Yilkal Kefale, and appointed Arega Kebede in replacement," the body said in a statement reported by the official Amhara Media Corporation.

The resignation on Wednesday came after the legislature, known as the Regional Council, discussed "the region's current security situation", it said.

"After the discussion a consensus agreement was reached (on the need) for consistent reform," it said.

Tension in the northern region ratcheted up this year after the end of a devastating war in the neighbouring region of Tigray that also drew in fighters from Amhara.

In April the federal government announced it was dismantling regional forces across the country.

The move triggered protests by Amhara nationalists who said it would weaken their region.

Clashes erupted in early July between the national army and local fighters known as Fano, prompting the authorities in Addis Ababa on August 4 to declare a six-month state of emergency.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), an independent state-affiliated organisation, on August 14 said heavy fighting had subsided in major urban areas on August 9 but was continuing in other parts of the region.

The military leadership set in place in Amhara under the state of emergency said on August 23 that the situation had "returned to normal conditions" thanks to "measures taken during the second and third phase of military operations."

"The general command gave strict order to continue the military operation in order to strengthen and secure the peace and stability," it said.

The situation in Amhara is impossible to verify on the ground, as the federal authorities restrict access to the region.

The toll from the fighting remains unclear, but the EHRC has voiced concern over civilian casualties from the use of heavy artillery.

Doctors in two of the affected cities told AFP in early August that there had been scores of deaths and injuries among civilians.

On August 13, at least 26 people in the town of Finote Selam died in an air strike, a hospital official and local resident told AFP.

A mosaic of more than 80 ethno-linguistic communities, Ethiopia has struggled territorial conflicts within its borders.

It is structured as a federal republic, comprising 12 regional states that are arranged on ethnic and linguistic lines, and two administrative councils, which includes Addis Ababa.

The Amhara region is inhabited mostly by the Amhara people, the country's second most populous ethnic group.

The Regional Council, which is dominated by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party, had appointed Yilkal, an academic, in October 2021. His successor is a relative unknown on the political scene.

ayv/sva/ri/giv

Democrats accuse tax prep firms of undermining new IRS effort on electronic free file tax returns

FATIMA HUSSEIN
Updated Fri, August 25, 2023 



, H&R Block signs are displayed in Jackson, Miss. Congressional Democrats are accusing big tax preparation firms including Intuit and H&R Block of undermining the federal government's upcoming electronic free-file tax return system, and are demanding lobbying, hiring and revenue data to determine what's going on.

 (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats are accusing big tax preparation firms including Intuit and H&R Block of undermining the federal government's upcoming electronic free file tax return system and are demanding lobbying, hiring and revenue data to determine what's going on.

The lawmakers accuse the companies of lobbying against the new program, hiring former government workers to sway public interest against free file for all, and deliberately sabotaging a government program that had previously offered free tax prep services, according to letters obtained by The Associated Press.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., sent letters to the executives of Intuit, H&R Block, the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights and the Free File Alliance, a group of tax preparation companies that provide free online services through the IRS website.

Warren and Porter are seeking specifics on the amount of money firms have made since being members of the Free File Alliance and information on the number of former government workers who’ve joined their firms in the past two years.

“Tax prep companies have engaged in a long and aggressive lobbying campaign to prevent the IRS from offering taxpayers a direct filing option,” the lawmakers' letter to Intuit CEO Sasan K. Goodarzi reads.

Derrick Plummer, an Intuit spokesman, said his firm will respond to the lawmakers' letter, adding that taxpayers already have the ability to file taxes free of charge. “An IRS Direct File system is redundant and will not be free — not free to build, not free to operate, and not free for taxpayers," he said.

Plummer said a free-file system built by the government "is a solution in search of a problem, and that solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars.”

An H&R Block spokesperson also said that there are free file options for taxpayers and that the “IRS should focus additional funding on improving its existing services for taxpayers.”

An agreement with the Free File Alliance prevented the IRS from creating its own free tax return filing system in exchange for the companies providing free services to taxpayers making $73,000 or less annually, but the agreement's key provision ended in 2019. Tax experts and government reports say the program largely failed to reach its intended audience, with only 3% of eligible taxpayers using it.

The IRS in May announced that it would launch a pilot program for the 2024 filing season to allow taxpayers to file directly to the agency for free. If the effort is successful it could be implemented nationwide in the future, potentially saving taxpayers the added cost of going through a tax prep company.

As it moves forward under the helm of new IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, groups on both sides of the issue have mobilized to sway the public and Congress over the usefulness of the program.

An April analysis by the AP found that Intuit, H&R Block and other private companies and advocacy groups for large tax preparation businesses, as well as proponents of electronic free file, have reported spending $39.3 million since 2006 to lobby on free file and other matters. Federal law doesn’t require domestic lobbyists to itemize expenses by issue, so the sums are not limited to free file.

Tim Hugo, executive director of the Free File Alliance, said Friday in an email to the AP that his organization “does not lobby, does not hire lobbyists, has not hired lobbyists in the past, and has never had a PAC.”

And David D. Ransom, counsel for the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights, said by email that the new IRS free file program will not be free and easy to implement and that the U.S. tax code is too complex for the planned free file program to be successful.

“Proponents of Direct File often suggest that we ought to have tax administration systems that are like those in Denmark or Estonia,” he said. “We deliver social benefits through our tax code; most European countries do not.”

In July, a group of congressional Democrats, including Warren and Porter, released a report that outlined how three large tax preparation firms — H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer — sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta and Google over the course of at least two years. TaxAct and H&R Block said protecting client privacy is a top priority, and TaxSlayer said the report contained false or misleading statements. Meta said it was clear in its policies that advertisers “should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools.”

In a letter to the heads of the IRS, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS watchdog, the lawmakers said their findings “reveal a shocking breach of taxpayer privacy by tax prep companies and by Big Tech firms" — and cited the report as an argument for the creation of a government-run free file system.

"Tax prep companies simply cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ sensitive personal and financial information," states the Thursday letter to H&R Block CEO Jeff Jones.

The IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a “direct file” system as part of the funding it received from the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ flagship climate and health care measure, which President Joe Biden signed last summer. It gave the IRS nine months and $15 million to report on how such a program would be implemented.

The report’s initial cost analysis shows an option run by the IRS “could cost less than $10 per return to provide, and of course would be free to taxpayers — by comparison, simple electronic filing options currently available to taxpayers are around $40.”

The study estimates that annual costs of direct file may range, depending on the program’s usage and scope, from $64 million for 5 million users to $249 million for 25 million users.

Sugar in India’s Key Growing Areas Under Threat From Poor Rain

Pratik Parija
Fri, August 25, 2023 





(Bloomberg) -- Sugar crops in some of India’s major growing regions are in desperate need of rain as drier conditions threaten the production outlook, which may place more pressure on containing rising food costs.

Rainfall is badly needed to replenish groundwater used for irrigating crops in Maharashtra, Sanjay Khatal, the managing director of the Maharashtra State Co-Operative Sugar Factories Federation Ltd., said in an interview. The state is India’s biggest sugar producer, accounting for about 37% of output.

“At the moment, the crop is at risk, but if rains improve in the balance period of the monsoon season, then the situation will take a turn for the better,” he said. Some parts of Maharashtra have received as much as 20% less rain than normal since the start of the season, according to the weather bureau.

A smaller crop could prompt the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to curb exports to prevent a surge in domestic prices ahead of elections early next year, similar to the measures India has already implemented on rice. Maharashtra’s Khatal said it’s too early to make a prediction about sugar production given there is more than a month before the monsoon ends.

The Indian government will make a decision about overseas sugar shipments for 2023-24 when actual estimates of total production are available, according to the food ministry.

The South Asian nation is the world’s second biggest producer after Brazil, and any production shortfall and subsequent export ban could reverberate across markets, boosting sugar futures traded in New York and London. India allowed mills to export about 6.1 million tons in 2022-23, compared with 11 million tons a year earlier after late rains reduced yields and cut output.

The New York contract, which climbed for a third day after reversing losses, is headed for a 2.3% weekly gain.

“There aren’t any talks with the government on sugar exports at present,” said Aditya Jhunjhunwala, president of the Indian Sugar Mills Association. “We will assess the crop after monsoon season is over in September and approach the government on allowing exports after that,” he said, adding there will be enough supplies next season to meet domestic demand.


The group estimates production at 31.7 million tons in 2023-24 and domestic consumption at 27.5 million tons, leaving a surplus of 4.2 million tons. India’s planted sugar cane area was at 5.61 million hectares (13.9 million acres) as of Friday, little changed from a year earlier, according to the farm ministry.

Lower Rainfall

Even though 94% of India’s sugar cane area is irrigated, rains are needed during the monsoon from June to September to fill dams, ponds, wells and replenish ground water. Some areas of Karnataka have received as much as 27% less rainfall so far, while in Uttar Pradesh, rains have been mixed.

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka account for more than 80% of India’s sugar cane production, according to the agriculture ministry. As of Thursday, water storage in the country’s 146 main reservoirs was 21% less than a year earlier, according to the state-run Central Water Commission.

The harvest in Karnataka, the third biggest producer, will likely fall by 20% in the year starting October due to less rain, according to Shivanand H. Kalakeri, the state’s commissioner for cane development and director of sugar.

“We have asked mills to start a little late next season as the crop needs some more time to mature,” Kalakeri said. Factories normally begin crushing in the middle of October, Kalakeri said.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/08/worlds-largest-sugar-producer-india-to.html

https://sidneymintz.net/sugar.php

Sugar - Sidney Mintz 

Sugar, or sucrose (C12H22O11), is manufactured photosynthetically by green plants. We humans can't make sugar. The best we can do is to extract it, and change ...

SWEETNESS AND POWER 

MINTZ.pdf 

Billionaire Ray Dalio says India’s moon landing is another sign of its ‘ascendence’—and predicts stellar growth for its economy


Steve Mollman
Sat, August 26, 2023

Billionaire Ray Dalio believes India is the next big investment opportunity. The nation’s historic moon landing this week only strengthened his conviction.

On Wednesday, India successfully landed a spacecraft on the lunar south pole, thought to be the moon’s richest region for water. Just days earlier, Russia had failed in its attempt to become the first country to land a craft there.

India’s rover will now look for water, which could be a source of oxygen and fuel for future missions—or lead to a moon colony.

“This success belongs to all of humanity,” Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said during a webcast of the event.

“India's successful lunar mission…is another one of many straws in the wind showing its ascendence,” wrote Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, in a post on X.

He noted that India tops his “health index for countries”—where he projects 10-year growth rates for nations—with an estimated 7% growth rate.

India has “the right mix of ingredients that shows that it has great potential and the right leadership to catalyze it,” he added.

In June, Dalio described Modi as “a man whose time has come when India’s time has also come. He and India are in an analogous position to Deng Xiaoping and China in the early 1980s—i.e., at the brink of the fastest growth rates and biggest transformations in the world.”

With tensions simmering between the U.S. and China, he noted, Modi is “in a unique position to influence the complexion of the world order via influencing the non-aligned world's dealings with these two leading world powers. I believe that Modi has what it takes to have the greatest impact on the largest number of people in the world at a time that the risks of harmful impact are greater than at any time in our lifetimes.”

Dalio is somewhat less enthusiastic about China these days. While he’s invested billions into Chinese companies, he said earlier this month that it’s time for China to “engineer” a massive restructuring of its debt. But “there isn’t a country I know of that hasn’t done this, typically several times,” he noted.

Meanwhile some big names share Dalio’s enthusiasm for India. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said his electric-vehicle maker would establish a presence in the nation “as soon as humanly possible.” And Goldman Sachs predicted last month that India would become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, surpassing the U.S.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

UPDATE 1-

Chinese minister says India free to join RCEP trade bloc

Reuters

Fri, August 25, 2023 

NEW DELHI, Aug 25 (Reuters) - India is free to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), China's Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said on Friday in New Delhi, adding that it would boost trade between India and China which is growing "very fast".

The RCEP is the world's largest trade bloc backed by China and groups 15 Asia-Pacific economies, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and 10 member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Relations have soured between the two nuclear-armed neighbours after clashes at a disputed border site in Ladakh in the western Himalayas resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in June 2020.

Shouwen, speaking during a discussion at the 'Business 20 summit' of G20 member nations, said it was India's decision whether to join the RCEP and that the door was "always open".

India's Trade Minister Piyush Goyal, who chaired the discussion, said trade between India and China is growing but "largely skewed in China's favour".

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to China's President Xi Jinping about India's concerns over unresolved border issues on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg this week.

Both sides agreed to intensify efforts to disengage and de-escalate, India's foreign secretary told reporters on Thursday.

Xi told Modi that improving China-India relations served the interests of the two countries and was conducive to peace, stability, and development, according to China's official Xinhua news agency, which said the meeting was at Modi's request. (Reporting by Shivangi Acharya; Writing by Shivam Patel; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Toronto program encourages hijab-wearing women to get on two wheels

Anna Mehler Paperny
Sat, August 26, 2023 









Community program Hijabs and Helmets aims to provide education and a welcoming environment toward people new to cycling

By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) - For Tagreed Elhassan it's the feeling of the wind in her face.

Cycling gives her a sense of independence and a way to exercise. She learned the basics growing up in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and now a program in her new home of Toronto has taught the 24-year-old Eritrean refugee how to steer and basic bike mechanics, giving her the confidence to teach others.

"I learned it here," she said, sitting in a park in Toronto's east end. "Small things that grow into something big."

Hijabs and Helmets aims to provide education and a welcoming environment toward people new to cycling and the city - especially to Muslim women who may come from backgrounds where cycling was not the norm.

The program was created three years ago to meet a community need, said Menna Badawi, a community health worker at Access Alliance Multicultural Health & Community Services and program lead for Hijabs and Helmets.

It gets most of its funding from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns Toronto sports teams including the Maple Leafs ice hockey team and the Raptors basketball team.

The group realized "there was a gap in services for Muslim women in the community ... who are interested in cycling and kind of don't know where to go," Badawi said.

Badawi, who has been part of an all-women Muslim running club, said she understood the feeling.

"As a Muslim hijabi I did find there was a gap in recreational sports for women who look like me," she said.

The group serves Toronto's Taylor Creek area, which has a high proportion of newcomers, Badawi said.

Elhassan said she got involved in the program last year with her sisters. Soon she felt comfortable enough to bike to the supermarket, bags balanced on handlebars.

The deliberate inclusion of hijab-wearing women "means a lot," Elhassan said. "I felt like, oh, we are recognized."

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

Canadian minister makes rare China trip for talks on climate, biodiversity

Steve Scherer
Sat, August 26, 2023 


Canada's Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa

By Steve Scherer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on Saturday leaves for Beijing to join talks on fighting climate change and preserving biodiversity, the first Canadian minister to go to China in four years.

A month ago, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry visited China for similar discussions. Other G7 countries including France and Germany have also sent climate representatives since COVID-19 travel restrictions were lifted.

"I'm hoping that we can have open and frank conversations about a number of issues relating to climate change," Guilbeault told Reuters on Friday. Both Canada and China are large emitters and "maybe there are ways we can cooperate", he said.

Guilbeault, a former advocate for environmental groups including Greenpeace, will attend the annual meeting of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), an climate advisory group to the Chinese government, from Aug. 28-30.

Guilbeault said two important issues he wants to bring up are methane emissions reductions and a global renewable energy target, which is being discussed ahead of the United Nations climate change conference later this year.

"There's a lot of low hanging fruits in terms of methane emission," he said. "This is a conversation we can have with the Chinese government and... maybe we could work on that together."

Guilbeault said he also wants to follow up on a U.N. nature summit hosted by Canada and presided over by China late last year, which culminated in a global deal to protect the ecosystems that prop up half the world economy.

Canada is seeking China's cooperation on the climate despite tensions, including recent allegations that Beijing interfered in the last two federal elections, and after a long standoff involving two Canadian men that ended in 2021.

Chinese authorities took two men, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, into custody in December 2018 shortly after Canadian police detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, on a U.S. warrant.

The men were released on the same day in September 2021 when the U.S. Justice Department dropped its extradition request for Meng and she returned to China.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by David Gregorio)