Sudan, Protests continue after deadliest day since military coup

 english_Alyurae  November 18, 2021

Street clashes again shook Sudan’s capital on Thursday, a day after security forces shot dead 15 protesters in the bloodiest day since the military’s October 25 takeover.

Wednesday’s killings were condemned by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet who said statement that “it is utterly shameful that live ammunition was again used yesterday against protesters.”

Since Thursday morning, police fired tear gas to disperse dozens of anti-coup protesters who had stayed on the streets of north Khartoum overnight, witnesses said, braving an intensifying crackdown that has drawn international condemnation.

Police tore down makeshift barricades the demonstrators had erected the previous day.

Later in the day, dozens of protesters returned to rebuild them and police again fired tear gas in a bid to clear the streets, witnesses said.

“Protesters responded by hurling stones at the police,” said one of them.

On October 25, top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — Sudan’s de facto leader since the April 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir — detained the civilian leadership and declared a state of emergency.

The move upended Sudan’s fragile transition to full civilian rule, drawing international condemnation and a flurry of punitive measures and aid cuts.

“We condemn violence towards peaceful protesters and call for the respect and protection of human rights in Sudan,” the US State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs said on Twitter.

Appeal to international community

UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association Clement Voule said he had “received alarming reports of increased use of lethal force by the military against peaceful protesters”.

He called on the international community to “put pressure on Sudan to immediately stop the repression against civilians and respect their rights”.

Burhan insists the military’s move “was not a coup” but a step to “rectify the course of the transition” to civilian rule.

Thousands took to the streets on Wednesday in Khartoum and other cities but were met by the deadliest crackdown since the coup.

At least 15 people were killed, most of them in north Khartoum, doctors said, raising the toll since the coup to 39 dead.

Police said they had recorded only one death among protesters in north Khartoum. Another 30 had suffered breathing difficulties from tear gas inhalation.

They said they had fired no live rounds and used only “minimum force”, even as 89 officers were wounded, some of them critically.

The latest demonstrations were organised despite a near-total shutdown of internet services and the disruption of telephone lines across Sudan.

By Thursday morning, phone lines had been restored but internet services remained largely cut.

Bridges connecting Khartoum with its neighbouring cities reopened and traffic returned to many of the capital’s streets.

Last week, Burhan formed a new Sovereign Council, the highest transitional authority, with himself as chief and military figures and ex-rebel leaders keeping their posts.

He replaced members from the Forces for Freedom and Change, Sudan’s main civilian bloc, with little-known figures.

Call for ‘peaceful protests’

The FFC is an umbrella alliance that spearheaded the protests which led to the ouster of Bashir in 2019, and its mainstream faction has supported the anti-coup protests of recent weeks.

Sudan’s largest political faction, the Umma Party, condemned the use of force by the security forces and called for peaceful protests to continue “until the coup is brought down” and those who have committed crimes against the people have been held accountable.

Since the coup, Burhan has removed clauses referring to the FFC from the 2019 power-sharing deal between the military and the civilians from the bloc.

This week, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee met with the generals and the ousted civilian government in a bid to broker a way out of the crisis.

Phee has called for the reinstatement of ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who is effectively under house arrest.

Burhan has vowed to hold the planned elections in 2023, reiterating to Phee on Tuesday that his actions aimed to “correct the trajectory of the revolution”.

(AFP)

 

Another ‘Mass Killing’ in Khartoum, as Burhan and Hamidti Janjaweed and security forces open fire on peaceful protesters

 english_Alyurae  November 17, 2021

At least 10 Sudanese protesters were shot dead and dozens more wounded, medics said, when thousands rallied Wednesday against last month’s coup, chanting “no to military power” amid clouds of tear gas.

The fatalities – all in Khartoum, especially its northern districts – raised to 34 the death toll from unrest since the military seized power, a pro-democracy doctors’ union said. Hundreds more have been wounded.

Several rallies broke out across the capital, even though telephone lines were cut and internet services have been disrupted since the power grab, AFP journalists reported.

Security forces fired tear gas, injuring several more protesters, witnesses said. The medics union also reported “dozens of bullet wounds”, while security forces deny firing live rounds.

“The people choose civilian rule,” demonstrators chanted, also shouting slogans against Sudan’s ruler, top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Demonstrations also erupted in Port Sudan, an AFP journalist said, against the coup which halted a democratic transition that followed the 2019 toppling of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir.

Efforts to stem the protests have seen hundreds arrested, including activists, passers-by and journalists. Qatari network Al Jazeera’s bureau chief was arrested Sunday and released Tuesday.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors has said security forces have also arrested injured people inside Khartoum hospitals.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella of unions instrumental in the 2019 protests, denounced “immense crimes against humanity” and accused the security forces of “homicide”.

One protester in Khartoum said the “repression has been fierce”.

“There has been a lot of violence, continuous tear gas and sound grenades,” 42-year-old Soha told AFP, adding that she saw one person with gunshot wounds and that there were many arrests.

Restore ‘legitimacy’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Kenya on Wednesday urged Africans to watch out for rising threats to democracy.

He told Sudan’s military the country stood to regain badly-needed international aid if it restores the “legitimacy” of civilian government.

Washington has suspended some $700 million in assistance to Sudan since the coup.

“If the military puts this train back on its tracks and does what’s necessary, I think the support that has been very strong from the international community can resume,” said Blinken.

Prior to 2019, Sudan had been under some form of military dictatorship for much of its modern history.

Burhan has declared a state of emergency, ousted the government and detained the civilian leadership, derailing a transition to full civilian rule and drawing international condemnation.

Burhan insists the military’s move “was not a coup” but rather a push to “rectify the course of the transition”.

‘Trajectory of revolution’

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee has been shuttling between the generals and the ousted civilian government in a bid to broker a way out of the crisis.

Phee has called for the reinstatement of ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who is effectively under house arrest.

The few remaining free members of his cabinet continue to describe themselves as the “legitimate” government and refuse to negotiate with the military leaders.

While some of the civilian leaders have been freed since the power grab, new ones have been arrested.

Burhan last week announced a new Sovereign Council, the highest transitional authority, with himself as chief and all nine military members keeping their posts.

Its four civilian members were replaced.

Burhan has also removed a clause in the transitional constitutional declaration that mentions the Forces for Freedom and Change, the key group behind the protests that toppled Bashir.

He has continued to promise elections will go ahead as planned in 2023, reiterating to Phee on Tuesday that his actions aimed to “correct the trajectory of the revolution”.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Kim Kardashian and Leeds aid Afghan female footballers' flight to Britain


Issued on: 19/11/2021 -

London (AFP) – Members of the Afghanistan women's youth development football team have been airlifted to the UK in an evacuation flight funded by US celebrity Kim Kardashian.

The 35 female footballers and their families, a total of 130 people, arrived at Stansted Airport, east of London, in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to the ROKiT Foundation.

The squad had been in Pakistan on temporary 30-day visas since escaping from Afghanistan following a takeover of the country by the Taliban but risked being sent back when their asylum period expired if no other country was prepared to take them in.

But a charter flight brought them to the UK, where they will spend 10 days of a coronavirus quarantine in a hotel before starting their new lives.

A representative for Kardashian, best known as a star of reality television, told Britain's PA news agency the flight was funded by her and her SKIMS brand.

Siu-Anne Gill, chief executive officer of the ROKiT Foundation which helped organise the footballers' escape from Afghanistan, said she was "extremely humbled by the courage shown by these girls".

"That's inspired us to ensure that their efforts in getting over the border don't go to waste," she added.

Since their return to power on August 15, the Taliban have said that women can play football but only under strict conditions -- namely barred from playing in public.

Other Afghan female players have fled to Portugal

Leeds United are among the organisations offering to help the footballers who have arrived in England, with Andrea Radrizzani, the owner of the Premier League football club, saying in a statement: "We are delighted the Afghan Women & Girls Development Football Team and their families, led by their brave, former captain Khalida Popal have landed safely in the UK, following extensive efforts by a number of partners.

"We are honoured to have played our part and grateful that the UK government has enabled their resettlement in the UK."

He added: "This demonstrates the power of football and sport in general, as a force for good and shows how the football community is able to collaborate and mobilise to save lives.

"Through Play for Change Charitable Trust and Leeds United we stand ready to support the girls and their families in building an inclusive and prosperous future. We can't wait to see them playing football again."

A British government spokesperson said: "Like others we have brought to the UK from Afghanistan, the Afghanistan girls' football team will receive a warm welcome, support and accommodation,"

The Islamist Taliban banned women from sporting activity or even going to a match when they last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to the 2001 US-led invasion that followed the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

© 2021 AFP

ROBOTS TO THE RESCUE

Waymo will help UPS ship parcels this holiday season with autonomous trucks
Sean Szymkowski 12 hrs ago

This upcoming holiday season is set to be chaotic due to supply chain bottlenecks and a rising demand for shipping services. UPS and Waymo both know this, so the latter announced Wednesday it'll aid the shipping giant along the way. Waymo's Via trucking service is stepping in with its prototype autonomous trucks to help UPS ship packages through the end of the year

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© Provided by Roadshow 

Beep beep, packages coming through on a self-driving truck. Waymo

The autonomous vehicle company said this is a "natural step" following successful local deliveries with UPS amid an ongoing partnership. This next step will see Waymo deploy its Class 8 semi trucks equipped with the fifth-generation Waymo Driver, the autonomous system's name, for trial shipping runs. As long as the trucks don't prove to be a headache, it'll be much needed help for UPS in the coming months.

While it's good news UPS will get some backup, this won't be a nationwide program. Instead, the self-driving Waymo trucks will haul goods between the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas. From there, UPS will load goods meant for air freight and get them to their final destinations. Through it all, Waymo hopes its prototype autonomous driver learns even more along the way. Additionally, the company wants to keep putting its tech and services in the field as it builds out an autonomous shipping ecosystem for the future. Everything like safety, efficiency, scalability and more is still ripe for lessons in these early days.

With that said, some of your holiday gifts may at some point ride on an autonomous semi truck this season.

Migrants fear ruse behind Mexican residency offer
AFP 

Immigration agents lined a highway in southern Mexico offering hundreds of migrants temporary residency if they abandoned their march. Exhausted, some accepted, while others kept going, afraid of being deported.

© CLAUDIO CRUZ Migrants traveling in a caravan through southern Mexico hitch a ride on a truck in the state of Veracruz

© CLAUDIO CRUZ Migrants traveling in a caravan board a bus after accepting an offer from the Mexican authorities of a one-year residency permit on humanitarian grounds

The offer of residency cards has split opinion and sowed suspicion within the caravan that set out three weeks ago from near the border with Guatemala to demand refugee status.

© CLAUDIO CRUZ US-bound migrants traveling in a caravan walk along a highway in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca

Promises of food, water and an airconditioned bus to take them to a shelter while awaiting a one-year permit on humanitarian grounds were enough to persuade several migrants.

But many others were unconvinced, despite suggestions that the card could smooth their passage to the United States.

"Lies -- they're going to deport us!" men and women shouted angrily at the dusty checkpoint in the southeastern state of Veracruz, where immigration agents worked hard to try to persuade them to stop marching.

Elena Raudales, a migrant from Honduras, showed AFP a document called a "visitor's card for humanitarian reasons" with her name and photograph that she was given earlier this year.

"Even so they detained me two months ago and sent me back" to near the border with Guatemala, she said.

"We're not going to believe anything anymore," she added.

According to officials, around 1,500 people have accepted the temporary residency offer, reducing the caravan's size considerably since it left the southern city of Tapachula on October 23

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© CLAUDIO CRUZ Migrants wait on a bus in southern Mexico after accepting an offer from the immigration authorities to apply for a one-year residency permit on humanitarian grounds

Around 800 people remain in the group, mostly Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty.

- 'Lied to us' -

Many migrants are reluctant to accept the residency offer because they fear being tricked and deported, said Christian Joel, a 22-year-old Honduran.

"They lied to us already," he said, complaining of a lack of assistance from the immigration authorities since he arrived in Mexico a year ago.

He is making a second attempt to return to the United States, where he lived for 18 years from the age of two with his family until he was deported for driving without a license, he said.

But some other migrants went willingly with the authorities in the hope of getting legal documents.

"We're going to try.... We've already come a long way and we're very tired," said 30-year-old Salvadoran Walter Ceron as he prepared to board a waiting bus.

The offer was also tempting for Vilma Escobar, 26, who was getting ready for another day pushing her two-year-old son's stroller along the highway under the beating sun.

Sometimes she thinks "I would like that card, but it means taking a risk," said the 26-year-old Guatemalan, unsure if going with immigration would take her closer or further from her goal of reaching the United States.

- 'No legal value' -

US President Joe Biden's arrival in the White House has led to increased flows of undocumented foreigners arriving in Mexico hoping to be allowed into the United States.

More than 190,000 irregular migrants were detected by Mexican authorities between January and September this year, three times more than in 2020.

Some 74,300 have been deported.

The United States meanwhile registered more than 1.7 million people entering illegally from Mexico in the year to September, a new record.

Mexican officials have said they will not stop the migrant caravan as long as the migrants travel on foot, while also trying to persuade them to give up.

Irineo Mujica, a Mexican activist accompanying the caravan, is also skeptical about the cards being offered to the migrants.

In reality they "have no legal value" and cannot be used to travel freely or find a job, he said.

The aim is "not to help migrants, but to dissolve the caravan," added Mujica, 50, who emigrated to the United States as a child and has dual citizenship.

He shrugs off criticism from the Mexican government as well as suggestions from the US ambassador to Mexico that his actions have enriched people smugglers and criminals.

"It doesn't bother me because I'm not a politician," Mujica said.

"I have a moral responsibility, nothing more," he added.

jg-dr/jh

Ignore 'hysterical people' — inflation is not here to stay, economist says

Elliot Smith 19 hrs ago

U.S. CPI inflation came in at an annual 6.2% in October, its steepest climb for more than 30 years.

The persistent high inflation and continued pressures such as supply chain bottlenecks have led many economists to question the Federal Reserve's long-held view that the spike will be "transitory."

A breakdown of the latest U.S. data indicates that inflation is confined to certain sectors and will not pose a threat to the recovery, according to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.

U.S. CPI inflation came in at an annual 6.2% in October, its steepest climb for more than 30 years.

Energy, shelter and vehicle costs led the gains, which more than wiped out the wage increases that workers received for the month.

The persistent high inflation and continuation of pressures such as supply chain bottlenecks have led many economists to question the Federal Reserve's long-held view that the spike will be "transitory."

However, stronger-than-expected October retail sales and industrial production figures this week have indicated that the broader economic recovery may well be on track, even as inflation drives prices skyward.

Weinberg told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday that with industrial output and GDP back to pre-pandemic levels, the U.S. economy has essentially recovered. He argued that the labor market lagging is "typical for economic recessions," with unemployment following the 2008 global financial crisis taking around a decade to fully recover.

That said, November's jobs report indicated that the labor market was now gathering steam, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 531,000 in October and driving the unemployment rate down to 4.6%.

"We have a problem related to specific sectors of the economy, not the economy overall. I was surprised to read those industrial production and manufacturing numbers, but they are what they are, and we are doing it now with 5 million fewer people working than before the pandemic, so this tells us that productivity ought to be up by maybe 3% or more compared to then," Weinberg said.

He suggested that the market needs to keep productivity gains in mind when looking at wage increases, which are "tolerable with steady, stable prices as long as they are offset by productivity gains."

Citing High Frequency Economics' aggregation of data across the component sectors within the CPI reading, Weinberg estimated that around one third are falling while half are growing at less than 2%, which he argued "is not inflation."

"The rise of selected categories, scattered categories of products within CPIs are making those averages of the basket price move higher, but that doesn't mean that all prices are moving higher along with all wages," Weinberg said.

"Inflation is a process of spiraling wages and prices, it is not a one-time event, an off-time shock to prices coming from an understandable supply shock."
Ignore 'hysterical people'

Weinberg cited Milton Friedman to make the case that Fed intervention based on these individual pockets of spiking inflation would likely do "more harm than good." He also highlighted comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, both of whom have suggested that tightening policy in response to inflation resulting from temporary supply shocks would be counterproductive.

"Let's not be influenced by hysterical people like Larry Summers, who are telling us that inflation is taking off. Let's listen to what the people who actually are making policy are telling us," Weinberg said.

Summers was contacted for comment by CNBC. The former U.S. Treasury secretary has in recent weeks called on the Fed and the Biden administration to tackle rising inflation, and argued that the "transitory" label had run its course.

© Provided by CNBC Larry Summers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Despite having long advocated for more expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, Summers, now president emeritus of Harvard University, said in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this week that he had changed his view in the face of the evidence. He also challenged the notion that inflation was confined to just a few sectors.

"In October, prices for commodity goods outside of food and energy rose at more than a 12 percent annual rate," Summers said.

"Various Federal Reserve system indexes that exclude sectors with extreme price movements are now at record highs."

'We don’t deserve this': Inflation hits Turkish people hard

ISTANBUL (AP) — Market-stand owner Kadriye Dogru makes do with stale, sesame-covered bagels, known as simit, for lunch these days. The widowed mother of two says she goes without lunch so she can put food on the table for her family later in the day.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The money that the 59-year-old earns by selling sweatpants and other garments at Istanbul's Ortakcilar market no longer lasts, and she is struggling to buy food, let alone anything else.

“I had never experienced such a deplorable life. I go to sleep, I wake up and the prices have gone up. I bought a 5-litre can of (cooking) oil, it was 40 lira. I went back, it was 80 lira,” she said. “We don’t deserve this as a nation.”

Many people in Turkey are facing increased hardship as prices of food and other goods have soared. While rising consumer prices are affecting countries worldwide as they bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic, economists say Turkey's eye-popping inflation has been exacerbated by economic mismanagement, concerns over the country’s financial reserves and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s push to cut interest rates.

He claims lower borrowing costs will boost growth, though economists say just the opposite is the way to tame soaring prices. The Turkish lira has been tumbling to record lows against the U.S. dollar as the country’s central bank has slashed interest rates, fueling concerns about its independence.

Caught in the middle are everyday Turks trying to make ends meet.

“Everything is so expensive, I cannot buy anything,” Suheyla Poyraz said as she browsed food stalls at the Ortakcilar market in Istanbul’s Eyupsultan district.

The 57-year-old homemaker has voted for Erdogan’s party and called on the government to act to end inflation.

“If you are the government and if we are voting for you to put things right, why aren’t you intervening? Why aren’t you stopping the rising prices?” Poyraz said.

High inflation has been hurting the popularity ratings of Erdogan, whose early years in power were marked by a strong economy. Opinion surveys indicate that an alliance of opposition parties that have formed a bloc against Erdogan’s ruling party and its nationalist allies are fast narrowing the gap.

The Turkish government says inflation rose nearly 20% in October compared with a year earlier, but the independent Inflation Research Group, made up of academics and former government officials, put it close to a stunning 50%. In comparison, U.S. prices rose about 6% from a year ago — the most since 1990 — and inflation in the 19 European Union countries that use the euro exceeded 4%, the highest in 13 years.

Turkey's currency, as a result, hit an all-time low of 10 against the U.S. dollar last week and has lost some 25% of its value since the start of the year. That is driving prices higher, making imports, fuel and everyday goods more expensive. While some argue that a weaker lira makes Turkish exporters more competitive in the global economy, much of Turkey’s industry relies on imported raw materials.

There are concerns about Erdogan's influence over monetary policy. He's appointed four central bank governors since 2019 and fired bankers who are said to have resisted lowering interest rates. The bank has decreased rates by 3 percentage points since September and will release its latest decision Thursday.

In contrast, central banks in other pandemic-hit countries have been raising rates or considering doing so in the months ahead as backups at ports and factories, labor shortages and soaring energy costs have pushed up prices.

Foreign investors have been dumping Turkish assets, and Turks have been converting their savings to foreign currencies and gold.

“There has been a massive selloff in financial markets just due to this intervention to the central bank’s independence,” said Ozlem Derici Sengul, an economist and founding partner of the Istanbul-based Spinn Consulting. “There are several factors that move both inflation and financial market prices ... (but) the dominant factor is the central bank’s policy.”

She estimates more than half of the population “is struggling in terms of income.”

Erdogan, meanwhile, insists that the economy is strong and that the country is emerging from the pandemic in better shape than others.

“Shelves in Europe are empty, they are empty in the United States. Praise to God, we are continuing with plentitude and abundance,” he has said.

His government has blamed exorbitant food prices on supermarket chains and ordered an investigation that has resulted in fines. He also has ordered agricultural cooperatives to open a thousand new shops across the country in a bid to keep food prices low.

Earlier, he accused a group of students who slept outdoors in parks to protest high housing and dormitory prices of “terrorism.” Meanwhile, rents have skyrocketed and prices for home sales, mostly pegged on the dollar, are increasing.

In a bid to alleviate suffering, Labor and Social Security Minister Vedat Bilgin said this month that the government was working to adjust the minimum wage to protect workers against rising prices.

“We are working to remove the issue of minimum wage from the agenda — I can already say that it will provide a relief,” he said.

Economists say it's not enough.

“The inflation and low income and uneven income distribution will have more side effects in 2022 and 2023 if the government continues to insist on low interest rates, loose monetary policy and election preparations,” Sengul said.

Musa Timur, who owns a grocery store in Istanbul, said rising prices make it hard for him to replace products.

“Any product that we sell — we cannot get them in at the same prices,” he said.

He said his customers are no longer able to afford a variety of food and mostly buy bread, pasta and eggs.

___

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press journalists Zeynep Bilginsoy and Ayse Wieting in Istanbul contributed.

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This story was first published on Nov. 16, 2021. It was updated on Nov. 17, 2021, to correct that Turkey’s central bank has decreased interest rates by 3 percentage points since September, not increased them.

Mehmet Guzel And Suzan Fraser, The Associated Press

Walmart and Target clash with investors over strategy to keep prices low despite inflation

Melissa Repko 

Investors are selling off shares of Walmart and Target after the discounters pledged to absorb some higher costs rather than passing it on to consumers.

Both Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and Target CEO Brian Cornell say they are playing the long game to win new customers, deepen loyalty and keep up sales momentum.

"It's all about market share, market share, market share," Brian Yarbrough, a retail analyst for Edward Jones. "And typically when you're focused on market share that can come at the expense of profitability."

© Provided by CNBC

Walmart and Target put up strong third-quarter performances this week, beat Wall Street's expectations and spoke of holiday shoppers already starting to splurge on gifts and gatherings this season. Yet the investor response was swift: A brutal sell-off.

Target shares closed down about 5% Wednesday. Walmart closed down nearly 3% on Tuesday, after its earnings report. Shares continued to drop Wednesday, erasing all its gains year-to-date.

The two sides are at odds on the retailers' strategy of absorbing some of the rising costs of shipping, labor and materials rather than passing them on to customers with higher prices. Both Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and Target CEO Brian Cornell have drawn a clear line. Their strategy: Keep prices low in a bid for customer loyalty — even if it means a hit to profits.

The pushback they're hearing is: Why not charge shoppers more? Americans have had a ravenous appetite for shopping. They socked away money during the pandemic and the holiday forecasts are rosy.

McMillon said Walmart must uphold its reputation for value — or risk scaring away customers who feel sticker shock. He invoked the big-box retailer's founder in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

"We save people money and help them live a better life," he said. "Those are the words that came out of [Walmart founder] Sam Walton's mouth. He loved to fight inflation. So do we."

Cornell said Target is playing the long game, too, even as that means swallowing extra costs.

"We are protecting prices," he said on a call with reporters. "It's as important to our guests this year as safety has been throughout the pandemic."

He and the company's team of executives defended that strategy, even as they were peppered with questions by analysts on an early Wednesday earnings call.
'All about market share'

Target and Walmart have seen significant sales gains during the pandemic, as consumers avoided the mall, bought more groceries and sought out items for more time at home from puzzles to loungewear.

Target, in particular, has seen eye-popping numbers that make for tough comparisons. The company's 2020 sales grew by more than $15 billion — greater than its total sales growth over the prior 11 years. And its stock, even with Wednesday's selling, is up more than 43%, putting its market value at more than $123 billion.

Target has touted its market share gains frequently on calls with investors. It picked up about $9 billion in market share in the fiscal year ended Jan. 30, based on research by the company and third-parties. It said it gained another $1 billion in market share in the first three months of this fiscal year.

Now, both retailers face new complexities. Consumers are juggling added expenses, from commutes to the office to vacations and meals at restaurants. They are spending through the extra cash that they saved up during the earlier part of the pandemic or received from stimulus checks. And they are seeing the price of groceries, gas and more jump. At the same time, the retailers are deciding to spend more on transportation — going so far as to charter their own ships, to make sure shelves are well stocked — and they have had to raise wages and sweeten benefits to ensure warehouses and stores are staffed and running smoothly.

Steph Wissink, a retail analyst for Jefferies, said after Target and Walmart's outsized gains in the last 18 months "giving up that momentum is hard to do."

"Price is one lever they have to continue to honor their customer promises and to aggressively defend their share," she said.

The unusual environment has led to mixed signals about consumers' mindset and potential behavior, according to Wissink.

"In the U.S., hyperinflation isn't something we regularly navigate so there's no precedent, recent experience, or muscle memory to tap into," she said. "We can observe other markets of the world as proxies but the U.S. economy is uniquely consumer-driven."

With the move to keep prices low, Target and Walmart have signaled the companies fear losing customers and sales if costs are passed through, she said. That's why, the retailers are "strategically putting their own margins on the line to ensure consumerism continues to advance," Wissink explained.

Brian Yarbrough, a retail analyst for Edward Jones, said it will take time to see if Walmart and Target are making a smart bet or a terrible mistake.

"It's all about market share, market share, market share," he said. "And typically when you're focused on market share that can come at the expense of profitability."

Inflation at a three-decade high

Inflation hit a three-decade high in October, according to the Labor Department. The consumer price index, which includes a mix of products ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents, rose 6.2% from a year ago, the most since December 1990.

Some categories have seen a bigger jump than others. Fuel, for instance, surged 12.3% for October. Used vehicle prices rose 2.5% for the month. And food prices grew by 0.9% — with meat, poultry, fish and eggs collectively increasing 1.7%.

Food is a big category for Walmart and Target. Walmart is the largest grocer in the country by revenue. Target has used its grocery business as a traffic driver.

On a Wednesday earnings call, Target's Cornell called growth of its food and beverage category "one of the real success stories within our business over the last few years." He said pantry-stocking trips have inspired customers to toss a variety of other merchandise into their shopping carts and driven higher online sales as people get a gallon of milk through curbside pickup.

Cornell and McMillon said they are not seeing signs of price-sensitive customers, such as trading down to smaller packs or cheaper brands.

Katie Thomas, lead of the Kearney Consumer Institute, said some costs are easier to pass on to shoppers. With food, she said, a price hike is risky.

"Grocery is more complicated because consumers are going to feel it in their everyday," she said. "Even in the pandemic, we all felt like prices were already going up because people were buying more and they were taking less frequent [store] trips. People are very aware of it."

With other categories, she said, retailers can get away with bumping up price. The tricky part, she said, is for retailers to figure out where shoppers will pay a premium and what may spook them.

"Even in a period of a recession or of inflation, consumers are just going to make trade-offs in certain categories instead of trade downs across the board," she said. For instance, she said, some people are willing to buy off-brand grocery bags or ketchup — but are unwilling to buy a lower quality steak or skip a trip to the hair salon.

Big Tech's Biggest Lobbying Arm Loses Microsoft and Uber as Priorities Splinter
Mack DeGeurin 

The trade organization once central to Big Tech’s intensive lobbying efforts appears to be slowly fading into the background as companies increasingly opt for a go-it-alone approach. That decline escalated this week with a new report from Axios revealing Microsoft and Uber, among two of the group’s largest members, are jumping ship

.

© Photo: Justin Tallis (Getty Images)

Founded in 2012, the IA at one point included Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook (now Meta), and has served as the main vessel for pushing through favorable legislative outcomes for the companies. The IA has played a pivotal role in numerous policy decisions in recent years, including a deal to create a version of the controversial 2018 FOSTA-SESTA law that was arguably more favorable to tech companies. The group’s influence has waned since then though, especially as tech firms fret over looming antitrust legislation, an area the IA has so far opted to stay away from.

In an email, IA’s SVP of Global Communications and Public Affairs Christina Martin told Gizmodo the organization still has nearly 40 members and has every hope Microsoft and Uber may rejoin in the future. “It is always unfortunate to lose a member, but business decisions related to time and resources are to be respected,” Martin said. “Microsoft and Uber have been great supporters of IA for nearly a decade.” Microsoft meanwhile told Gizmodo in an email that the company periodically reviews its trade association memberships to “ensure alignment with our policy agenda.”

Microsoft and Uber’s departures may mark the first major companies to leave the IA, but the group has been in decline for some time now. According to a July Politico report, the IA had lost nearly one-fifth of its personnel in just over a month. Though other heavy hitters like Google, Amazon, and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta have so far stuck with the IA, they’ve reportedly planned to significantly cut their spending to the trade organization.

Though Big Tech’s most influential lobbying firm may be on its way out sooner or later, that doesn’t mean internet giants themselves are spending any less on lobbying. Meta spent nearly $5.1 million on lobbying in the third quarter this year according to Open Secrets, the second most it’s spent of any quarter in 12 years. That’s only behind Q1 2020 (an election year). Overall, Meta alone spent 14.7 million in the first three quarters of 2021. Amazon spent the second most amongst tech firms in the third quarter, shelling out $5.04 million and $15.3 million for the year so far.

A separate report from the advocacy group Public Citizen determined Facebook and Amazon were the two biggest corporate lobbying spenders in the US last year, beating out Comcast, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.

So, why are the world’s largest tech firms starting to go it alone? In many ways, they are competing against one another with similar product offerings but through significantly different business models which could mean a more fragmented lobbying approach could make sense. Though Apple and Meta, for example, will likely square off over the next decade in AR and VR applications, the two are miles apart in terms of how they monetize user data, and on their general underlying philosophy to personal privacy.

Some firms, with Meta being the most pressing example, also face far more regulatory scrutiny and public opposition, which would likely swell their lobbying check more than other less controversial companies. Tech firms are also at odds over what types of regulatory concessions they’d find palatable. Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, for example, have all spoken in favor of new rules and standards around data privacy, but smaller firms have pushed back, claiming such rules would disproportionately benefit the top players. Conflicts like these may make tech firms simply too at odds to comfortably reside under one unified lobbying roof.

“When the Internet Association was started, you could see there was common ground, issues of principle and issues of policy that these companies all came down on the same side,” University of Washington professor Margaret O’Mara told Politico earlier this year. “Now, it’s quite different.”

And it’s not as if these mega-companies lack the financial resources needed to take lobbying into their own hands. With at least three tech firms already valued at over $2 trillion dollars, these giants can afford to go it alone and tailor their lobbying spending to suit their own individual needs.

In other words, don’t worry: Big Tech’s monetary assault on laws and governance isn’t going away anytime soon.

Book about Sackler family and opioid crisis wins UK prize

LONDON (AP) — A book about a wealthy American family whose actions helped unleash the United States’ opioid epidemic — described by its author as a “story of hubris” — won Britain’s leading nonfiction book prize Tuesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty” was awarded the 50,000 pound ($67,000) Baillie Gifford Prize during a ceremony at London’s Science Museum.

Keefe’s book chronicles the billionaire Sackler clan, owner of Purdue Pharma, whose members used their fortune to fund museums and art galleries around the world. A reckoning has come with the revelation that much of that fortune was based on OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller that the company developed in the 1990s and marketed aggressively to doctors.

“Empire of Pain” traces the rise of the family’s fortunes under three doctor brothers and their children, and its downfall in a web of lawsuits and bankruptcy proceedings.

Keefe said it was “a portrait of three generations of one family behaving very badly, but also on a deeper level a story about systems and about impunity.”

“I think in some ways it’s a story about hubris,” he said. “In a lot of ways it’s a story about denial."

Amid protests over its role in the opioid business, the Sackler name has been removed in recent years from wings and galleries at institutions including the Louvre in Paris and the Serpentine Gallery in London. Institutions including Britain’s National Portrait Gallery and the Tate galleries have stopped taking the family’s donations due to its role in the opioid crisis, which has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. alone since 2000.

Some opioid deaths have been attributed to OxyContin and other prescription painkillers, though most are from illicit forms of opioids such as heroin and illegally made fentanyl.

Sackler family members have denied wrongdoing, although their company has pleaded guilty twice to federal crimes over their opioid practices. In September a U.S. federal judge gave conditional approval to a settlement that would remove the family from ownership of Purdue and reorganize the business into a charity-oriented company whose profits would go to government-directed efforts to prevent and treat addiction.

Accepting the prize, Keefe thanked “all of the many lawyers who advised me about what to do with all the incoming mail” when facing threats from the Sackler family during his work on the book.

“It wasn’t a situation where I ever thought about bailing, particularly under pressure from the family,” he told The Associated Press. “If anything, some of the pressure that I got persuaded me that I was probably on the right track.”

The Baillie Gifford Prize recognizes English-language books from any country in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

“Empire of Pain” beat five other finalists: Cal Flyn’s environmental exploration “Islands of Abandonment”; Harald Jähner’s “Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955”; Kei Miller’s essays on discrimination, “Things I Have Withheld”; John Preston’s media mogul biography “Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell”; and Albanian writer Lea Ypi’s memoir “Free: Coming of Age at the End of History.”

Jill Lawless, The Associated Press

When billionaires battle: The fall of Seagram sheds light on the role blood plays in family-controlled firms

By Howard Green

Special to the Star
Sat., Nov. 13, 2021

THE BRONFMANS

Every family is a delicate ecosystem. But a family-controlled business can be akin to a one-party state. This has been playing out in full view on the nasty channel between members of the Rogers family over control of the company built by the late Ted Rogers.

Family behaviour also reveals corporate governance limits, as it can certainly put boards of family-controlled companies to the test. Governance school can’t possibly teach directors to subdue mudslinging between brother, mother and sisters.

The late Sam Bronfman used to say “blood counts” in reference to the importance of family at Seagram, the liquor colossus he built and controlled. Eventually, a much more private family clash than the Rogers’ feud led to Seagram’s sale and disappearance. A blue-chip board supported what the family ultimately wanted.

Note that Seagram had just one class of shares versus Rogers’s dual-class structure. The latter setup is one that many argue is shareholder unfriendly. By the way, the Bronfman saga didn’t come into sharp relief until the third generation. At Rogers, earlier generations are breaking the good china.

In the latter’s case, observe how blood does and doesn’t count. On one side, Edward Rogers, son of Ted, wanted to replace the CEO. On the other, his mother and sisters, stood by the status quo as the company tries to acquire Shaw Communications. While each side fought for the founder’s legacy, meaning blood counts, each side went at the other, meaning it doesn’t.

Billionaire family blowups aren’t new. The roots of dysfunction are deep and tangled. At Seagram, the disintegration was borne of Sam Bronfman’s iron grip on the company, and his legendary temper. At one point, he forced his brother out of the business (blood didn’t count). When it came time for “Mr. Sam” to pass the baton, he handed it to his eldest son, Edgar (blood counted). His youngest, Charles, became an equal owner. He and Edgar got 60 per cent of the family holding, while sisters Minda and Phyllis got 40.

But Charles didn’t want to be CEO, even though he held the same voting power as Edgar. Although Edgar ran Seagram for years, Charles recounted how his brother was often thwarted by their father who couldn’t let go. (Disclosure: I co-authored Charles’ memoir, “Distilled.”)

Eventually, Edgar anointed his second son, Edgar Jr., as his successor (blood counted) and, according to Charles, gave him “carte blanche.” Governance types would be aghast to learn that Edgar Sr. made Seagram’s succession plan public via Fortune magazine, without informing the board of directors or Charles, his co-chairman (blood didn’t count).

Cue family culture. Charles recalled a lifetime pattern of deferring to Edgar Sr. Ultimately, he went along with his nephew and domineering brother to avoid a family war (blood counted). He wasn’t alone. The rest of the board also went along. While his era had long passed, Sam Bronfman once said board meetings consisted of declaring a dividend and having a drink.

There are two business decisions Charles deeply regrets. Although he tried, he wishes he could have prevented the 1995 sale of Seagram’s holding in DuPont. (Interestingly, with the help of professional management, the du Pont family managed to maintain control for almost two centuries). But Charles’ protests were ignored and he would only push so far. The distiller was the largest shareholder of the storied American company that garnered hundreds of millions in dividends per year for Seagram.

The sale of DuPont led to Seagram’s U-turn into entertainment, with the subsequent purchase of MCA, which became Universal Studios. This would have infuriated Sam, who’d admonished Edgar Sr. for personally buying a piece of MGM in 1968.

Meantime, five years after the purchase of MCA, as the media and technology sectors lurched towards convergence, Seagram sold itself to Vivendi for shares in Vivendi, which began a downward spiral. Not only did Seagram disappear and gobs of money evaporate, Charles called it “devastating” for family, employees, shareholders and his own self-image. For the second time, Charles hadn’t gone to war with the two Edgars (blood counted). In a posthumously published book, Edgar Sr. expressed regret for not consulting his brother.

So, which is more important, money or blood? Sam Bronfman would likely have been aghast at the rupture in his family and the loss of Seagram. One can only imagine what Ted Rogers would think of what’s happened.

A board can be expected to deal with money matters. But when a family controls a company, family matters can overwhelm money, even when billions are at stake.

Howard Green is a Toronto-based author.

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Thai king flies to Germany with his 30 royal poodles, entourage of 250 amid growing protests back home



Ryan General
Mon, November 15, 2021,

Pro-democracy demonstrations have continued in Bangkok amid reports that Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn has flown to Germany.

King’s second home: On Monday, Vajiralongkorn arrived in Munich and booked an entire floor of the Hilton Munich Airport hotel for his entourage of 250 people and 30 royal poodles, reported South China Morning Post.

An image of the 69-year-old king walking towards the hotel swimming pool emerged in the local newspaper Bild.

He was purportedly accompanied by a young woman thought to be a security guard.

Unwelcome guest: Vajiralongkorn attracted controversy in Germany after he made a similar trip to the German state of Bavaria last year amid mounting protests against him.

German politicians questioned the king’s prolonged stay in the state and expressed concern that he was conducting official duties from Germany.

According to Reuters, Germany’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas told the German federal parliament: “We have made it clear that politics concerning Thailand should not be conducted from German soil. If there are guests in our country that conduct their state business from our soil we would always want to act to counteract that.”

Many Thai citizens view the king’s display of his lavish lifestyle in poor taste given the country’s economic hardships throughout the pandemic.

Trip’s timing: The king’s latest trip coincided with a controversial verdict by Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday, which ruled that the pro-democracy protesters demanding monarchy reform violated a provision that bans any move to “overthrow” the royal institution, reported the Guardian.

The court called for an end to the protests and deemed demonstrators’ demands as an “abuse of the rights and freedoms and [harmful to] the state’s security.”

Social media erupted with the hashtags #subversion, #royalreform and #reformisnotsubversion, coinciding with posts and images of protesters calling for the abolition of the controversial lèse-majesté law, also known as Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code.

Student organizations from 23 universities in the country also released a joint statement rejecting the verdict.

Observers believe the verdict will negatively affect efforts to push for a parliamentary debate on Section 112, which allows jail time of up to 15 years for those convicted of insulting the monarchy.

According to the organization Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, 154 of the 1,636 people charged in protest-related cases since last year are facing lèese-majesté charges.

Included among the pro-democracy protesters’ primary demands are a constitution drafted by representatives of the people, monarchy system reforms, and the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and his government, as NextShark previously reported.

Fusion GPS interview with House panel leaves huge pile of breadcrumbs for Trump-Russia investigator

Natasha Bertrand
Tue, November 16, 2021, 

President Donald Trump listens as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson speaks during an event to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 12, 2018, in Washington.

Associated Press/Evan Vucci

LONG READ

The House Intelligence Committee released the transcript of its interview with Glenn Simpson, the cofounder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

The transcript left a massive pile of breadcrumbs for Trump-Russia investigators to sift through as they pursue their probe into Russia's election interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.

Editor's note: This article was updated after a Nov. 3, 2021 federal indictment accused Igor Danchenko, a Russia expert who contributed to the so-called Steele dossier, of lying to investigators about receiving information from Sergei Millian. Millian repeatedly denied he was a source for any material in the dossier.

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released the transcript of the panel's November interview with Glenn Simpson, the cofounder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

The House investigators' line of questioning touched upon subjects that the Senate Judiciary Committee did not delve into, largely due to a shift in focus spearheaded by the committee's top Democrat, Adam Schiff.

Rather than home in on the nature of Simpson's relationship with Christopher Steele — the former British intelligence officer hired by Fusion to research Trump's Russia ties — Schiff and his Democratic colleagues asked Simpson pointed questions about Russian money laundering, Russian organized crime, and whether Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail.

The result was a long trail of breacrumbs for investigators probing Trump's relationship with Russia.

"You mentioned that you'd done a lot of work as a journalist in terms of Russian organized crime, financial crimes, organized crime more generally," Schiff said. "What can you tell us about how the Russians launder their money and whether that was an issue of concern during the first phase of your work for Free Beacon?"

Fusion GPS was first hired by the conservative Washington Free Beacon in late 2015 to conduct opposition research on Trump. The research was later funded by the DNC via the law firm Perkins Coie.

"I guess the general thing I would say is that, you know, the Russians are far more sophisticated in their criminal organized crime activities than the Italians, and they're a lot more global," Simpson replied. "They understand finance a lot better. And so they tend to use quite elaborate methods to move money...I mean, if you can think of a way to launder money, the Russians are pretty good at it."

Glenn Simpson.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Simpson explained that "real estate deals" were a common Russian method of hiding and moving money. Asked whether Fusion had found "evidence" of corruption and illicit finance related to the purchase of Trump properties, Simpson replied that his firm had seen "patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering."

Schiff pounced: "What facts came to your attention that concerned you that the buying and selling of properties - the buying and selling of Trump properties might indicate money laundering?" he asked.

"There was -- well, for one thing, there was various criminals were buying the properties," Simpson replied. "So there was a gangster -- a Russian gangster living in Trump Tower."

The gangster went by Taiwanchik, and he'd been running a "high-stakes gambling ring" out of Trump Tower, Simpson said. The gangster also "rigged the skating competition at the Salt Lake Olympics" and sat in the VIP section of the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013 along with Trump "and lots of other Kremlin biggies," Simpson said.
Panama, Toronto, Scotland and Ireland

Asked whether the Russian government would have been aware of the Russian mafia's efforts to move or hide money in Trump properties, Simpson replied: "The Russian mafia is essentially under the dominion of the Russian Government and Russian Intelligence Services."

"And many of the oligarchs are also mafia figures," he continued. "And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin now."

Other concerning patterns, Simpson said, included "fast turnover deals and deals where there seemed to have been efforts to disguise the identity of the buyer."

Specifically, he said, "a project in Panama, the one in Toronto. Those both got a lot of fraud associated with them, a lot of fraud allegations, a lot of activity that I would say smacks of fraud, and a lot of Russia mafia figures listed as buyers who may or may not have actually put money into it."

NBC News reported in November that Trump's Panama hotel had organized crime ties.

Donald Trump (2nd L) poses with his children Donald Jr. (L), Ivanka and Eric (R) during a news conference to mark the opening of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto April 16, 2012.Mike Cassese/Reuters

A Russian state-owned bank under US sanctions, whose CEO met with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in December 2016, helped finance the construction of the president's 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto.

The bank, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, bought $850 million of stock in a Ukrainian steelmaker from the billionaire Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider, who was constructing the hotel at the time. Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier asked Simpson about Schnaider during the interview.

"Schnaider had no previous hotel or condo development experience," she said. "His most apparent qualification seemed to be that he made a lot of money quickly."

Simpson called Schnaider among "the most interesting" of the Trump-Russia characters, noting that his father-in-law was a "very important figure in the history of the KGB-Mafia alliance."

"I think that there is a lot of information to be had from Canadian law enforcement and from Belgian law enforcement about some of these characters," Simpson said.

Simpson said Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were also "concerning" because financial statements obtained by Fusion showed "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."

"At least on paper it says it's from The Trump Organization, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars," Simpson said.
"And these golf course are just, you know, they're sinks. They don't actually make any money."

GOP Rep. Tom Rooney said "the story about [Trump] financing Doonbeg in Ireland through money that we can't really trace but has sort of the fingerprints of Russian mobsters" was "fascinating."

Doonbeg is the home of Trump's hotel and golf course in Ireland.

"If we knew that Donald Trump was working with the Russian mafia to fund Doonbeg in Ireland, then there's no way he would be President," Rooney said. "So, I mean, that's why it's so fascinating."

Roger Stone, Julian Assange, and Nigel Farage

Schiff asked Simpson later whether he uncovered "any information regarding a connection between Trump or those around him and Wikileaks" — the self-described radical transparency organization founded by Julian Assange that published emails Russia had stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

"Roger Stone bragged about having his contact," Simpson replied, referring to Stone's public comments about having an intermediary with Assange. "We tried to figure out who the contact was."

We started going into who Stone was and who his relationships were with, and essentially the trail led to sort of international far right. And, you know, Brexit happened, and Nigel Farage became someone that we were very interested in, and I still think it's very interesting."

Farage is a British politican who headed the far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006-2009 and again from 2010-2016. Farage spearheaded the Brexit movement.

"So I have formed my own opinions that went through - that there was a somewhat unacknowledged relationship between the Trump people and the UKIP people and that the path to Wikileaks ran through that," Simpson said. "And I still think that today."

Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.Nigel Farage/Twitter

Schiff then asked whether the data company Cambridge Analytica, whose parent company is based in the UK, was the link between the Trump campaign and the Brexit campaign.

Simpson replied that the billionaire Mercer family, which has been credited with paving the way to Trump's victory, were "signficant" — moreso than Cambridge Analytica, which he said may have been "selling snake oil."

Simpson also mentioned a "Bannon Stone associate" named Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, an American associated with UKIP who he believed was "a significant figure in this."

"Were you able to find any factual links between the Mercers and Assange or Wikileaks or Farage?" Schiff asked.

Simpson pointed to Farage's trips to New York, and said he had been told, but had not confirmed, that "Nigel Farage had additional trips to the Ecuadoran Embassy...and that he provided data to Julian Assange."

"What kind of data?" Schiff asked.

"A thumb drive," Simpson replied.

'It appears the Russians...infiltrated the NRA'

Speier went on to ask Simpson why Russia seemed so interested in the National Rifle Association.

A McClatchy article published on Thursday morning revealed that the FBI is investigating whether Russian money flowed into the NRA via a Kremlin-linked banker named Alexander Torshin, which was then donated to the Trump campaign.

"It appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA," Simpson said. "And there is more than one explanation for why. But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations."

Simpson said Fusion spent "a lot of time investigating Mr. Torshin," who is "well known to Spanish law enforcement for money laundering activity."

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses members of the National Rifle Association during their NRA-ILA Leadership Forum at their annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, May 20, 2016.Reuters/John Sommers II

"He is one of the more important figures, but, you know, another woman with whom he was working, Maria Butina, also was a big Trump fan in Russia, and then suddenly showed up here and started hanging around the Trump transition after the election and rented an apartment and enrolled herself at AU, which I assume gets you a visa," Simpson said.

Maria Butina has attempted to build a pro-gun movement in Russia, where gun laws are strict and there is little interest by Russian citizens — and Russian President Vladimir Putin — to loosen them.

Butina was a former assistant to Torshin and reportedly claimed at a post-Election Day party that she had been a part of the Trump campaign's communications with Russia, according to The Daily Beast.
The Agalarovs, Kaveladze, and Crocus Group

Schiff asked Simpson what he knew about Trump's relationship with Aras Agalarov, the Russian-Azerbaijani billionaire who helped bring Trump's Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013.

Simpson replied that the Agalarovs started operating in the US "around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union and are associated with people who are connected to previous episodes of money laundering that are serious."

"Knowing what you do about the Agalarovs, what do you think is the significance of the fact that the – that Aras Agalarov was responsible, at least according to these public emails, for setting up the meeting at Trump Tower?" Schiff asked, referring to the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower between top Trump campaign officials and several Russian nationals.

"I think it's a reasonable interpretation that that was a Russian Government-directed operation of some sort, based on what I know now," Simpson replied.

Russian real estate developer Aras Agalarov (L) talks with his son, singer Emin Agalarov, during a news conference following the 2013 Miss USA pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada June 16, 2013.T

homson Reuters

He left another clue: "I think this tax court case involving the Agalarovs is an important document. I think that there's – I guess going back to your subpoena question, I also – you know, the Crocus Group has a much longer history in the United States than people realize, and I think there's all kind of good documents."

The Crocus Group is Agalarov's development company.

Simpson said that Irakly Kaveladze, a representative of Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, is another important player.

"I think that there is a lot to find out about Kaveladze," Simpson said. "But I have a little bit of knowledge of Kaveladze and a little bit of knowledge of the Agalarovs. Kaveladze surfaced in a previous money laundering investigation. I think there is more information about that money laundering investigation in the possession of the government than just the GAO report."

Kaveladze was implicated in a Russian money-laundering scheme in 2000, during which investigators found that several Russians and Eastern Europeans had formed shell companies and used them to move money through American banks.

Kaveladze has long served a far more important role than just a translator for the Agalarovs. He is the vice president of Crocus Group, and he met with Trump in 2013 during the Miss Universe pageant (Kaveladze can be seen standing behind Emin Agalarov as he speaks with Trump in a video taken in Moscow in 2013.)

Simpson also suggested that the committee examine the travel histories of Trump's children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, "and whether they had other meetings with Russians."

"And specifically, the connections between the Abramovichs and Ivanka and Jared is something that requires looking into, if it hasn't been," Simpson said, referring to Roman Abramovich and Jared Kushner.
Dmitry Rybolovlev and Igor Sechin

Steele told a reporter in December that investigators examining Trump's Russia connections needed "to look at the contracts for the hotel deals and land deals" that Trump had pursued with Russian nationals.

"Check their values against the money Trump secured via loans," Steele told The Guardian's Luke Harding. "The difference is what's important."

Steele did not go into further detail, Harding said, but seemed to be referring to a 2008 home sale to the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev that has come under scrutiny by the special counsel Robert Mueller.

Simpson emphasized the suspicion surrounding that home sale during his interview.

"When we first heard about it, it didn't fit with my timeline of when Trump seemed to have gotten deeply involved with the Russians," Simpson said. "Later, as I understood more, I began to realize that I actually was in the sort of first trimester of the Trump-Russia relationship, in that it actually fit in pretty well with some of the early things that had happened."

Dmitri Rybolovlev of Russia, President of AS Monaco Football Club attends Monaco's Ligue 1 soccer match against Paris St Germain at Louis II stadium in Monaco March 1, 2015.

Reuters/Eric Gaillard

Rybolovlev, a multibillionaire who was an early investor in one of the world's most lucrative fertilizer companies, bought a Palm Beach property from Trump for $95 million in 2008, two years after Trump put it on the market for $125 million; Trump had purchased it for $41 million in 2004.

Rybolovlev has never lived in the mansion and has since torn it down, but an adviser, Sergey Chernitsyn, told Business Insider last year that there was "every prospect that this investment will turn out to be profitable."

Rybolovlev's cash infusion into Trump's bank account is believed to be the most expensive home sale in US history. According to PolitiFact, 2008 was the year Trump Entertainment Resorts missed a $53.1 million bond interest payment and later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reorganize.

Richard Dearlove, who headed the UK foreign-intelligence unit MI6 between 1999 and 2004, told Prospect Magazine in April that Trump borrowed money from Russia for his business during the 2008 financial crisis.

"What lingers for Trump may be what deals — on what terms — he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money" when other banks would not loan to him, Dearlove said.

Simpson said his view of Rybolvlev's importance changed as he began to learn more about him.

"In particular, I didn't know in the early period that he was closely linked to Igor Sechin, and that, in fact, he was accused of essentially destroying an entire city environmentally with his potash mining operations," Simpson said.

Sechin is the CEO of Russia's state oil company, Rosneft,

Rybolvlev "managed to get out of it and walk out of Russia with billions of dollars with the apparent assistance of Sechin and Sechin's people," he continued. "And subsequently, received a report from a Russian émigré who is familiar with these events that...there were political or corruption aspects to that."

Additionally, Simpson said, he was "intrigued" by Rybolovelv's travel in August 2016 and the extent to which it coincided with Kushner and Ivanka Trump's travel around the same time.

"Cohen and Ivanka and Jared and Trump, and I can't remember whether Manafort's in this mix too, are all in the Hamptons area in August, and Dmitry Rybolovlev's plane is somewhere nearby, and flies to Nice," Simpson said, referring to the Trump Organization's lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

"And then most of these guys sort of fall off the radar and then, you know, I think it's the 12th of August, Rybolovlev's plane lands in Dubrovnik, and Jared and Ivanka surface in Dubrovnik," he said.
"And I don't know how they got there or whether they got there on his plane."

Sergei Millian and Michael Cohen

Simpson mentioned in his testimony that Fusion GPS had begun to scrutinize another trip Trump Organization representatives took to Moscow to promote a vodka brand. That trip was organized by Sergei Millian, the Belarus-born businessman who worked with the Trump Organization.

"When we looked at him, we found that he ran a sort of shadowy kind of trade group called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, which is -- Russians are known to use chambers of commerce and trade groups for intelligence operations," Simpson said.

Sergei Millian at an event following Trump's inauguration on January 20th.Screenshot/Facebook

Millian, who changed his name when he arrived in the US from Siarhei Kukuts to Sergei Millian, founded the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in 2006 and has described himself as an exclusive broker for the Trump Organization with respect to the company's potential real-estate dealings in Russia.

He attended several black-tie events at Trump's inauguration, and told the Russian news agency RIA that he had been in touch with the Trump Organization as late as April 2016. He was also photographed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2016 with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a longtime business associate of Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

It was around that time that Millian's organization, the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, was looking for "delegates" to attend the Russian Oil & Gas Forum in Moscow.

But Millian appears to have begun downplaying his ties to the Trump Organization after Western reporters started digging into Trump's Russia ties last summer.

Contrary to what he told RIA, Millian told Business Insider in an email earlier this year that the last time he worked on a Trump-brand project was "in Florida around 2008." He did not respond to a request to clarify the discrepancy.

Millian had two different resumes, according to Simpson: "In one resume he said he was from Belarus and he went to Minsk State, and then in another he was from Moscow and went to Moscow State," Simpson said. "In one he said he worked for the Belarussian Foreign Ministry; in the other, he said he worked for the Russian Foreign Ministry."

Additionally, Millian "was connected to" Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, arrives in Trump Tower in New York City.

Stephanie Keith/Reuters

"Michael Cohen was very adamant that he didn't actually have a connection to Sergie, even though he was one of only like 100 people who followed Sergi on Twitter," Simpson said. "And they -- we had Twitter messages back and forth between the two of them just - we just pulled them off of Twitter."

Cohen acknowledged to Business Insider earlier this year that Millian emailed him during the campaign. But he said he rarely if ever responded to the emails and stopped communicating with Millian in November 2016.

Simpson said Fusion came to understand more about Cohen as they continued their research.

"We gradually began to understand more about ·Michael Cohen, the President's lawyer, and his background, and that he had a lot of connections to the former Soviet Union, and that he seemed to have associations with organized crime figures in New York and Florida, Russian organized crime figures," Simpson said.
The Center for National Interest and trips to Hungary

Schiff asked Simpson whether there were other issues that came to his attention that were not contained in the Steele dossier "that you think we ought to be aware of that you either were able to substantiate in part, or you were not able to fully investigate."

Simpon brought up the Center for the National Interest and its president and CEO, Dimitri Simes — a Russian expat described by Simpson as "a suspected Russian agent" known to the FBI.

A biography of Simes on the Center's website says he was selected to lead the Center by former President Richard Nixon, "to whom he served as an informal foreign policy advisor and with whom he traveled regularly to Russia and other former Soviet states, as well as Western and Central Europe."

"There are a number of Russian defectors who, I think, maybe could speak to that," Simpson said, referring to Simes and the Center for the National Interest.

"I think there are some records around that might reflect some of that," he continued. "And I think that is — given their fundamental role in creating the Trump foreign policy, I think that is a really important area."

Simpson also pointed to "a lot of unexplained travel by various people" associated with Trump to Hungary, whose president Viktor Orban "is essentially a Putin puppet," Simpson said.

Orban has ushered in a new era of anti-migrant, pro-Russia policies since taking office in 2010.

Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, "has a big station" in Hungary, too, Simpson said.

Among the Trump associates who traveled to Hungary: Sebastian Gorka, "about three times," Simpson noted. Gorka was reportedly wanted by Hungarian police on gun-related charges, BuzzFeed reported on Thursday.

Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and JD Gordon also traveled to Hungary in 2016.

"I guess this is transitioning into another area, if you are interested in looking at things, is, you know, the European travel of certain people. And I would include Jared and lvanka in that," Simpson said.
Read the full transcript below:

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